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SIR WALTER SCOTT 

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A 



ADDRESS OF JOHN HAY AT THE UNVEIL- 
ING OF THE BUST OF SIR WALTER SCOTF 
IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY, MAY 21, 1897 



AN APPRECIATION 

A Clever French author made a book some 
years ago called the Forty-First Arm-Chair. 
It consisted of brief biographies of the most 
famous writers of France, none of whom had 
been members of the Academy. The astonish- 
ment of a stranger who is told that neither 
Moliere nor Balzac was ever embraced among 
the Forty Immortals, is very like that which 
has often affected the tourist who, searching 
among the illustrious names and faces which 
make this Abbey glorious, has asked in vain for 
the author of Wavcrley. It is not that he has 
ever been forgotten or neglected. His lines 
have gone out through all the earth and his 
words to the end of the world. No face in 
modern history, if we may except the magis- 
terial profile of Napoleon, is so well known as 
the winning, irregular features dominated by 
the towering brow of the Squire of Abbots- 
ford. It is rather the world-wide extent of 
his fame that has seemed hitherto to make it 



vi AN APPRECIATION 

unnecessary that his visible image should be 
shrined here among England's worthies. His 
spirit is everywhere ; he is revered wherever the 
English speech has travelled; and translations 
have given some glimpses of his brightness 
through the veil of many alien tongues. But 
the vastness of his name is no just reason why 
it may not have a local habitation also. It is 
therefore most fitting that his bust should be 
placed to-day, among those of his mighty 
peers, in this great pantheon of immortal 
Englishmen. 

In this most significant and interesting 
ceremony, I should have no excuse for appear- 
ing, except as representing for the time being 
a large section of Walter Scott's immense con- 
stituency. I doubt if anywhere his writings 
have had a more loving welcome than in 
America. The books a boy reads are those 
most ardently admired and longest remem- 
bered ; and America revelled in Scott when the 
country was young. I have heard from my 
father — a pioneer of Kentucky — that in the 
early days of this century men would saddle 
their horses and ride from all the neighbouring 
counties to the principal post-town of the 
region, when a new novel by the author of 



AN APPRECIATION vii 

Waverley was expected. All over our strag- 
gling States and Territories — in the East, 
where a civilization of slender resources but 
boundless hopes was building, in the West, 
where the stern conflict was going on of the 
pioneer subduing the continent — the books 
most read were those poems of magic and of 
sentiment, those tales of bygone chivalry and 
romance, which Walter Scott was pouring 
forth upon the world with a rich facility, a 
sort of joyous fecundity, like that of Nature 
in her most genial moods. He had no clique 
of readers, no illuminated sect of admirers, to 
bewilder criticism by excess of its own subtlety. 
In a community engaged in the strenuous 
struggle for empire, whose dreams, careless of 
the past, were turned, in the clear, hard light 
of a nation's morning, to a future of un- 
limited grandeur and power, there was none 
too sophisticated to appreciate, none too lowly 
to enjoy, those marvellous pictures of a time 
gone forever by, pleasing and stimulating to 
a starved fancy, in the softened light of mem- 
ory and art, though the times themselves were 
unlamented by a people and an age whose 
faces were set towards a far different future. 
Through all these important formative days of 



viii AN APPRECIATION 

the Republic, Scott was the favourite author of 
Americans ; and while his writings may not be 
said to have had any special weight in our 
material and political development, yet their 
influence was enormous upon the taste and the 
sentiments of a people peculiarly sensitive to 
such influences, from the very circumstances 
of their environment. The romances of 
courts and castles were specially appreciated 
in the woods and prairies of the frontier, 
where a pure democracy reigned. The poems 
and novels of Scott, saturated with the glam- 
our of legend and tradition, were greedily de- 
voured by a people without perspective, con- 
scious that they themselves were ancestors of 
a redoubtable line, whose battle was with the 
passing hour, whose glories were all in the 
days to come. 

Since the time of Scott we have seen many 
fashions in fiction come and go; each genera- 
tion naturally seeks a diff'erent expression of 
its experience and its ideals. But the author 
of Waverley, amid all the vicissitudes of 
changing modes, has kept his pre-eminence in 
two hemispheres, as the master of imaginative 
narration. Even those of us who make no pre- 
tensions to the critical faculty may see the two- 



AN APPRECIATION ix 

fold reason of this enduring masterhood. Both 
mentally and morally, Scott was one of the 
greatest writers that ever lived. His mere 
memory, his power of acquiring and retaining 
serviceable facts, was almost inconceivable to 
ordinary men, and his constructive imagina- 
tion was nothing short of prodigious. The 
lochs and hills of Scotland swarm with the 
engaging phantoms with which he has peo- 
pled them for all time; the historical person- 
ages of past centuries are jostled in our mem- 
ories by the characters he has created, more 
vivid in vitality and colour than the real soldiers 
and lovers with whom he has cast their lives. 
But probably the morality of Scott appeals 
more strongly to the many than even his 
enormous mental powers. His ideals are lofty 
and pure; his heroes are brave and strong, not 
exempt from human infirmities, but always 
devoted to ends more or less noble. His hero- 
ines, whom he frankly asks you to admire, are 
beautiful and true. They walk in womanly 
dignity through his pages, whether garbed as 
peasants or as princesses, with honest brows 
uplifted, with eyes gentle but fearless, pure in 
heart and delicate in speech. Valour, purity, 
and loyalty — these are the essential and undy- 



•^te^ 



X AN APPRECIATION 

ing elements of the charm with which this 
great magician has soothed and lulled the 
weariness of the world through three tor- 
mented generations. For this he has received 
the uncritical, ungrudging love of grateful 
millions. 

His magic still has power to charm all whole- 
some and candid souls. Although so many 
years have passed since his great heart broke 
in the valiant struggle against evil fortune, 
his poems and his tales are read with undimin- 
ished interest and perennial pleasure. He 
loved, with a simple, straightforward affection, 
man and nature, his country and his kind; he 
has his reward in a fame forever fresh and un- 
hackneyed. The poet who, as an infant, 
clapped his hands and cried ' Bonny! ' to the 
thunderstorm, and whose dying senses were 
delighted by the farewell whisper of the Tweed 
rippling over its pebbles, is quoted in every 
changing aspect of sun and shadow that 
sweeps over the face of Scotland. The man 
who blew so clear a clarion of patriotism lives 
forever in the speech of those who seek a line 
to describe the love of country. The robust, 
athletic spirit of his tales of old, the loyal 
quarrels, the instinctive loves, the stanch de- 



AN APPRECIATION xi 

votion of the uncomplicated creatures of his 
inexhaustible fancy — all these have their 
special message and attraction for the minds 
of our day, fatigued with problems, with 
doubts, and futile questionings. His work is 
a clear, high voice from a simpler age than 
ours, breathing a song of lofty and unclouded 
purpose, of sincere and powerful passion, to 
which the world, however weary and preoccu- 
pied, must needs still listen and attend. 



PREFATORY NOTE 

It will be observed that the greater part of 
this book has been taken in one form or other 
from Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott, in 
ten volumes. No introduction to Scott would 
be worth much in which that course was not 
followed. Indeed, excepting Sir Walter's 
own writings, there is hardly any other great 
source of information about him; and that is 
so full, that hardly anything needful to illus- 
trate the subject of Scott's life remains un- 
touched. As regards the only matters of con- 
troversy, — Scott's relations to the Ballantynes, 
I have taken care to check Mr. Lockliart's 
statements by reading those of the representa- 
tives of the Ballantyne brothers ; but with this 
exception, Sir Walter's own works and Lock- 
hart's life of him are the great authorities con- 
cerning his character and his story. 

Many years ago Mr. Gladstone, in express- 
ing to the late Mr. Hope Scott the great de- 
light which the perusal of Lockhart's life of 



xiv PREFATORY NOTE 

Sir Walter had given him, wrote, * I may be 
wrong, but I am vaguely under the impres- 
sion that it has never had a really wide circula- 
tion. If so, it is the saddest pity, and I should 
greatly like (without any censure on its pres- 
ent length) to see published an abbreviation 
of it/ Mr. Gladstone did not then know that 
as long ago as 1848 Mr. Lockhart did himself 
prepare such an abbreviation, in which the 
original eighty-four chapters were compressed 
into eighteen, — though the abbreviation con- 
tained additions as well as compressions. But 
even this abridgment is itself a bulky volume 
of 800 pages, containing, I should think, con- 
siderably more than a third of the reading in 
the original ten volumes, and is not, therefore, 
very likely to be preferred to the completer 
work. In some respects I hope that this intro- 
duction may supply, better than that bulky 
abbreviation, what Mr. Gladstone probably 
meant to suggest, — some slight miniature 
taken from the great picture with care enough 
to tempt on those who look on it to the study 
of the fuller life, as well as of that image of 
Sir Walter which is impressed by his own 
hand upon his works. 



CONTENTS 



TAGF. 

An Appreciation — John Hay . . . . v 
Biography of Sir Walter Scott — Sir Leslie 

Stephens ....... 1 

CHAPTER I 

Ancestry, Parentage, and Childhood . . 55 

CHAPTER H 
Youth — Choice of a Profession ... 79 

CHAPTER HI 
Love and Marriage ..... 96 

CHAPTER IV 
^ Earliest Poetry and Border Minstrelsy . 105 

CHAPTER V 

Scott's Maturer Poems . . . . .117 

CHAPTER VI 

Companions and Friends ♦. . . . .140 

CHAPTER VII 
First Country Homes . . . , .153 



xvi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VIII 
Removal to Abbotsford, and Life There . . 162 

CHAPTER IX 
Scott's Partnerships with the Ballantynes . 174 

CHAPTER X 

The Waverivey Novels . . . . .189 

CHAPTER XI 
Morality and Religion ..... 229 

CHAPTER XII 
Distractions and Amusements at Abbotsford . 237 

CHAPTER XIII 
Scott and George IV. ..... 246 

CHAPTER XIV 

Scott as a Politician ..... 254 

CHAPTER XV 
Scott in Adversity ...... 267 

CHAPTER XVI 
The Last Year 287 

CHAPTER XVII 
The End of the Struggle . . . .301 




Biography of Sir Walter Scott 



'IR WALTER SCOTT, (1771-1832), author of 
the Waverley Novels, son of Walter Scott by 
his wife Anne Rutherford, was born on 15 
August, 1771, in a house in the College 
Wynd at Edinburgh, since demolished. The True 
History of several honourable Families of the Right 
Honourable name of Scott (I688), by Walter Scott 
of Satchells, was a favourite of the later Walter from 
his earliest years. He learnt from it the history of 
many of the heroes of his writings. Among them were 
John Scott of Harden, called ' the Lamiter,' a younger 
son of a duke of Buccleuch in the fourteenth century; 
and John's son, William the ' Boltfoot,' a famous bor- 
der knight. A later Scott called ' Auld Wat,' the Har- 
den of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, married ISIary 
Scott, the ' Flower of Yarrow,' in 1567, and was the 
hero of many legends. His son, William Scott of Har- 
den, was made prisoner by Gideon Murray of Elibank, 
and preferred a marriage with Murray's ugliest daugh- 
ter to the gallows. William's third son, Walter, laird of 
Raeburn, became a Quaker, and suffered persecutions 
described in a note to the Heart of Midlothian. Rae- 
burn's second son, also Walter, became a Jacobite, and 
was known as ' Beardie,' because he gave up shaving in 
token of mourning for the Stuarts. He died in 1729- 



2 LIFE OF 

' Beardie ' and his son Robert are described in the intro- 
ductory Epistles to Marmion. Robert quarrelled with 
his father, became a Whig, and set up as a farmer at 
Sandy Knowe. He was a keen sportsman and a ' gen- 
eral referee in all matters of dispute in the neighbour- 
hood.' In 1728 he married Barbara, daughter of Thomas 
Haliburton of New Mains, by whom he had a numerous 
family. One of them, Thomas, died on 27 January, 
1823, in his nineteenth year. Another, Robert, was in 
the navy, and, after retiring, settled at Rosebank, near 
Kelso. Walter Scott, the eldest son of Robert of Sandy 
Knowe, born 1729, was the first of the family to adopt a 
town life. He acquired a fair practice as writer to the 
signet. His son says {Autobiographical Fragment) that 
he delighted in the antiquarian part of his profession, but 
had too much simplicity to make money, and often rather 
lost than profited by his zeal for his clients. He was a 
strict Calvinist; his favourite study was church history; 
and he was rather formal in manners and staunch to old 
Scottish prejudices. He is the original of the elder 
Fairford in Redgauntlet. In April, 1758, he married 
Anne, eldest daughter of John Rutherford, professor of 
medicine in the university of Edinburgh. Her mother 
was a daughter of Sir John Swinton, a descendant of 
many famous warriors, and through her her son traced 
a descent from Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, 
the friend of Ben Jonson. Mrs. Scott was short, and 
' by no means comely.' She was well educated for the 
time, though with old-fashioned stiffness; was fond of 
poetry, and was of light and happy temper of mind. 
Though devout, she was less austere than her husband. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 3 

Her son Walter had no likeness, it is said, to her or to 
his father, but strongly resembled his great-grandfather, 
' Beardie,' and especially his grandfather Robert. 

Walter Scott, the writer to the signet, had a family of 
twelve, the first six of whom died in infancy. The sur- 
vivors were Robert, who served in the navy under Rod- 
ney, wrote verses, and was afterwards in the East India 
Company's service. John, the second, became a major 
in the army, retired, and died in 1816. The only daugh- 
ter, Anne, suffered through life from an early accident, 
and died in 1801. Thomas, who showed much talent, 
entered his father's profession, failed in speculations, 
was made paymaster of the 70th regiment in 1811, ac- 
companied it to Canada in 1813, and died there in April, 
1823. Daniel, the youngest, who was bred to trade, 
ruined himself by dissipation, and emigrated to Jamaica. 
There he showed want of spirit in a disturbance, and 
returned a dishonoured man, to die soon afterwards 
(1806). His brother Walter refused to see him, and 
afterwards felt bitter regret for the harshness. 

Walter Scott, the fourth surviving child, was a very 
healthy infant, but at the age of eighteen months had a 
fever when teething and lost the use of his right leg. 
(On this illness see a medical note by Dr. Creighton to 
the article on Scott in the Encyclopcedia Britannica, 9th 
ed.) After various remedies had failed he was sent to 
Sandy Knowe, where his grandfather was living with 
his second son, Thomas. Scott's earliest recollections 
were of his lying on the floor in this house, wrapped in 
the skin of a sheep just killed, and being enticed by his 
grandfather to crawl. Sheepskins and other remedies 



4 LIFE OF 

failed to cure the mischief, which resulted in a perma- 
nent deformity; but he recovered his general health, be- 
came a sturdy child, caught from his elders a ' personal 
antipathy ' to Washington, and imbibed Jacobite preju- 
dices, due partly to the fall of some of his relations at 
Culloden. He learnt from his grandmother many songs 
and legends of the old moss-troopers and his border an- 
cestry. In his fourth year he was sent with his aunt, 
]Miss Janet Scott, to try the waters at Bath. He was 
taken to London shows on his way; and at Bath was 
petted by John Home, the author of Douglas, and by 
his uncle. Captain Robert Scott. He learnt a little read- 
ing at a dame school, and saw As You Like It at the 
theatre. He returned after a year to Edinburgh and 
Sandy Knowc, where he learnt to ride. JNIrs. (Alison) 
Cockburn describes him in a letter of December, 1777, 
as the * most extraordinary genius of a boy ' she ever 
saw. In his eighth year he was sent for sea-bathing 
to Prestonpans, where a veteran named Dalgetty told 
him stories of the German wars, and where he first made 
acquaintance with George Constable, the original of 
Jonathan Oldbuck. 

In 1778 he returned to his father's house in George's 
Square, Edinburgh, and after a little preparation was 
sent, in October, 1778, to the high school. A sturdy 
Presbyterian, James Mitchell, also acted as private tutor 
to him and his brother. Scott had many ' amicable dis- 
putes ' with the tutor about cavaliers and roundheads, 
and acquired some knowledge of the church history of 
Scotland. Mitchell testifies to his sweetness and intel- 
ligence. He did not, however, distinguish himself at 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 5 

school, where he was for three years under Luke Fraser, 
and afterwards under Alexander Adam, the rector. 
He was an ' incorrigibly idle imp/ though ' never a 
dunce.' He was better at the ' yards ' (or playground) 
than in the class, and famous, in spite of his infirmity; 
for climbing the ' kittle nine stanes ' on the castle rock 
and taking part in pugilistic ' bickers ' with the town 
boys. Under Adams, however, he became a fair Latinist, 
and won praise for poetical versions of Horace and 
Virgil. His mother encouraged him to read Shake- 
speare, and his father allowed the children to act plays 
occasionally after lessons. His rapid growth having 
weakened him, he was sent for a half-year to his aunt at 
Kelso, where he attended school and made the acquaint- 
ance of James Ballantyne. Ballantyne reports that he 
was already an incomparable story-teller. An acquaint- 
ance with Thomas Blacklock, the blind poet, had led 
to his reading Ossian and especially the Faerie Queen, 
of which he could repeat ' marvellous ' quantities. 
He also read Hoole's Tasso, and was, above all, fasci- 
nated by Percy's Reliques. He was already beginning 
to collect ballads. He says that he had bound up ' sev- 
eral volumes ' of them before he was ten (Lockhart, ch. 
iv.), and a collection at Abbotsford dates from 1783. To 
the Kelso time he also refers his first love of romantic 
scenery. 

In November, 1783, Scott began to attend classes at 
the college. He admired Dugald Stewart, and attended 
a few lectures on law and history. Finding that his fel- 
lows were before him in Greek, he forswore the language 
and gave up the Latin classics as well. He remained 



e LIFE OF 

ignorant of even the Greek alphabet, though in later 
years he was fond of some Latin poetry. He was, how- 
ever, eagerly pursuing his favourite studies. With John 
Irving (afterwards a writer to the signet) he used to 
ramble over Arthur's Seat, each composing romantic 
legends for the other's amusement. He learnt Italian 
enough to read Tasso and Ariosto in the original, ac- 
quired some Spanish, and read French, though he never 
became a good linguist. A severe illness, caused by the 
' bursting of a blood-vessel in the lower bowels,' inter- 
rupted his serious studies; and he solaced himself, with 
Irving, in reading romantic literature. His recovery was 
completed at Rosebank, where his uncle Robert had re- 
cently settled, and which became a second home to him. 
He studied fortification on Uncle Toby's method, and 
read Vertot's Knights of Malta and Orme's Hindostan. 
Gradually he recovered, became tall and muscular, and 
delighted in rides, and, in spite of lameness, walks of 
twenty or thirty miles a day. His rambles made him 
familiar with many places of historical interest, and he 
tried, without success, to acquire the art of landscape 
painting. His failure in music was even more decided. 
— He did not resume his attendance at college in 1785, 
and on 15 May, 1786, he was apprenticed to his father 
as writer to the signet. Soon after this he had his only 
sight of Burns. As an apprentice Scott acquired regular 
business habits. He made a little pocket-money by copy- 
ing legal documents, and says that he once wrote 120 
folio pages at a sitting. His handwriting, as Lockhart 
observes, shows the marks of his steady practice as a 
clerk. He began to file his letters regularly, and was 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 7 

inured to the methodical industry to be afterwards con- 
spicuously displayed in literature. The drudgery, how- 
ever, was distasteful at the time. In 1788 he began to 
attend civil-law classes, which then formed part of the 
education of both branches of the legal profession. He 
here made the acquaintance of young men intended for 
the bar, and aspired to become an advocate himself. His 
father kindly approved of the change, but oflPered to 
take him into partnership. Both, however, preferred 
that the younger son Thomas should take this position; 
and Walter accordingly attended the course of study 
necessary for an advocate, along with his particular 
chum, William Clerk. They * coached ' each other indus- 
triously, and were impressed by the lectures of David 
Hume, the historian's nephew. Both were called to the 
bar on 11 July, 1792, Scott having defended a thesis 
' on the disposal of the dead bodies of criminals,' which 
was a * very pretty piece of Latinity,' and was dedicated 
to Lord Braxfield. 

Scott was already a charming companion and was a 
member of various clubs ; the ' Teviotdale Club,' to which 
Ballantyne belonged; 'The Club' (of Edinburgh), 
where he met William Clerk and other young advocates, 
and was known as ' Colonel Grogg ' ; and the ' Literary 
Society,' where discussions were held in which, although 
Scott was not distinguished as an orator, he aired his 
antiquarian knowledge, and gained the nickname ' Duns 
Scotus.' Scott's companions were given to the convivi- 
ality of the period; and, though strictly temperate in 
later life, he occasionally put the strength of his head to 
severe tests at this time. When the hero of Rob Roy is 



8 LIFE OF 

persuaded that he had sung a song during a carouse, he 
is repeating the author's experience. It seems, too, that 
such frolics occasionally led to breaches of the peace, 
when Scott was complimented as being the ' first to 
begin a row and the last to end it.' He fell, however, 
into no discreditable excesses, and was reading widely 
and storing his mind, by long rambles in the country, 
with antiquarian knowledge. As an apprentice he had 
to accompany an expedition for the execution of a writ, 
which first took him into the Loch Katrine region. He 
made acquaintance with a client of his father's, Alex- 
ander Stewart of Invernahyle, who had been out in 1715 
and 1745, and had met Rob Roy in a duel. Scott visited 
him in the highlands, and listened eagerly to his stories. 
At a rather later period he visited the Cheviots, and made 
a careful study of Flodden Field. 

The ' Literary Society ' encouraged him to take a higher 
place among his friends. He had * already dabbled,' 
says Lockhart, ' in Anglo-Saxon and the Norse sagas.* 
In 1789 he read before the society an essay intended to 
show that the feudal system was the natural product of 
certain social conditions, instead of being the invention 
of a particular period. In the winter of 1790-91 he at- 
tracted the attention of Dugald Stewart, whose class he 
was again attending, by an essay * on the Manners and 
Customs of the Northern Nations.' On 4 January, 
1791 J he was elected a member of the Speculative Soci- 
ety. He took great interest in its proceedings, was soon 
chosen librarian and secretary, and kept the minutes with 
businesslike regularity. An essay upon ballads which 
he read upon the night of Jeffrey's admission kd to an 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 9 

acquaintance between the two, and Jeffrey found him 
already collecting the nucleus of a museum of curiosities. 
By this time he had also become qualified for ladies' 
society. He had grown to be tall and strong; his figure 
was both powerful and graceful; his chest and arms 
were those of a Hercules. Though his features were not 
handsome, their expression was singularly varied and 
pleasing; his eye was bright and his complection bril- 
liant. It was a proud day, he said, when he found that 
a pretty young woman would sit out and talk to him 
for hours in a ballroom, where his lameness prevented 
him from dancing. This pretty young lady was prob- 
ably Williamina, daughter of Sir John and Lady Jane 
Belsches, afterwards Stuart, of Fettercairn, near Mont- 
rose, born October, 1776. She ultimately married on 19 
January, 1797, Sir William Forbes, bart., of Pitsligo, 
was mother of James David Forbes, and died 5 
December, 1810. Scott appears to have felt for her the 
strongest passion of his life. Scott's father, says Lock- 
hart, thought it right to give notice to the lady's father 
of the attachment. This interference, however, produced 
no effect upon the relations between the young people. 
Scott, he adds, hoped for success for * several long 
years.' Whatever the true story of the failure, there can 
be no doubt that Scott was profoundly moved, and the 
memory of the lady inspired him when describing Ma- 
tilda in Rohehy {Letters, ii. 18), and probably other hero- 
ines. He refers to the passion more than once in his 
last journal, and he had affecting interviews with her 
mother in 1827 {Journal, 1890, i. 86, 96, 404, ii. 55, 62, 
321). According to Lockhart, Scott's friends thought 



10 LIFE OF 

that the secret attachment had helped to keep him free 
from youthful errors, and had nerved him to diligence 
during his legal studies. As, however, she was only six- 
teen when he was called to the bar, Lockhart's language 
seems to imply rather too early a date for the beginning 
of the affair (see Bain's James Mill for an account of 
the Stuart family; James Mill was for a time Miss Stu- 
art's tutor). 

Scott, on joining the bar, received some employment 
from his father and a few others, but had plenty of 
leisure to become famous as a story-teller among his 
comrades. Among his dearest friends of this and later 
time was William Erskine (afterwards Lord Kinneder). 
At the end of 1792 he made his fh-st excursion to Lid- 
desdale, with Robert Shortreed, the sheriff-substitute 
of Roxburghshire. He repeated these ' raids ' for seven 
successive years, exploring every corner of the country, 
collecting ballads and occasionally an old border war- 
horn, and enjoying the rough hospitalities of the Dandie 
Dinmonts. A Willie Elliot of Millburnholme is said to 
have been the original of this great creation, though a 
Jamie Davidson, who kept mustard-and-pepper terriers, 
passed by the name afterwards; and Lockhart thinks 
that the portrait was filled up from Scott's friend, Wil- 
liam Laidlaw. Scott was everywhere welcome, over- 
flowing with fun, and always a gentleman, even when 
* fou,' which, however, was a rare occurrence. Other 
rambles took him to Perthshire, Stirlingshire, and For- 
farshire. He became familar with the scenery of Loch 
Katrine. At Craighall in Perthshire he found one orig- 
inal of the Tully-Veolan of Waverley, and at Meigle in 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 11 

Forfarshire he met Robert Paterson, the real Old Mor- 
tality. In 1796 he visited Montrose, and tried to col- 
lect stories of witches and fairies from his old tutor, 
Mitchell. The neighbourhood of the Stuarts at Fetter- 
cairn was probably a stronger inducement, but his suit 
was now finally rejected. His friends were alarmed at 
the possible consequences to his romantic temper, but he 
appears to have regained his self-command during a 
solitary ramble in the highlands. 

Another line of study was now attracting his attention. 
In 1788 a paper read by Henry Mackenzie to the Royal 
Society of Edinburgh had roused an interest in German 
literature. Scott and some of his friends formed a class 
about 1792 to study German, engaging as teacher Dr. 
Willich (afterwards a translator of Kant), and gained 
a knowledge of the languge, which was then a ' new dis- 
covery.' Scott disdained the grammar, but forced his 
way to reading by his knowledge of Anglo-Saxon and 
Scottish dialects. William Erskine shared his zeal, and 
restrained his taste for the extravagances of the German 
dramatists. He became Scott's most trusted literary ad- 
viser. Three or four years later James Skene of Rubis- 
law returned from Germany with a thorough knowl- 
edge of the language and a good collection of books. 
Their literary sympathies led to the formation of another 
of Scott's warmest friendships. 

The French revolution affected Scott chiefly by way 
of repulsion and by stimulating his patriotism. In 1794 
some Irish students of the opposite persuasion made a 
riot in the theatre. Scott joined with such effect as to 
break the heads of three democrats, and was bound over 



12 LIFE OF 

to keep the peace. He was keenly interested in the rais- 
ing of a volunteer regiment in Edinburgh, from which 
he was excluded by his lameness. He joined, however, 
in a scheme for raising a body of volunteer cavalry. It 
was not organized till February, 1797, when Scott was 
made quartermaster, ' that he might be spared the rough 
usage of the ranks.' He attended drills at five in the 
morning before visiting the Parliament house, dined with 
the mess, and became a most popular member of the 
corps. His military enthusiasm, which excited some 
amusement among his legal friends, was lasting. When, 
in 1805, there was a false alarm of an invasion, he rode 
a hundred miles in one day, from Cumberland to Dal- 
keith, an incident turned to account in the Antiquary 
(Lockhart, ch. xiv.) 

Scott's income at the bar had risen from 24Z. in his 
first year to 144Z. in 1797. Lockhart gives some speci- 
mens of his arguments, which apparently did not rise 
above the average. In the autumn of 1797 he was per- 
suaded by a friend to visit the English lakes, and thence 
they went to the little watering-place of Gilsland, near 
the ' waste of Cumberland ' described in Guy Manner- 
ing. Here he saw a beautiful girl riding, and, finding 
that she was also at Gilsland, obtained an introduction, 
and immediately fell in love with her. She was Char- 
lotte Mary Carpenter, daughter of a French refugee, 
Jean Charpentier. Upon his death, early in the revolu- 
tion, his wife, with her children, had gone to England. 
They found a friend in the Marquis of Downshire, on 
whose property Charpentier held a mortgage. The son 
obtained a place in the East India Company's service, and 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 13 

changed his name to Carpenter. The daughter is said 
bj' Lockhart to have been very attractive in appearance, 
though not of regular beauty, with dark brown eyes, 
masses of black hair, and a fairy-like figure. She spoke 
with a slight French accent. Scott, at any rate, was soon 
' raving' about her. She was just of age. Lord Down- 
shire approved. Her brother had settled an annuity of 
500^. upon her; and, though this was partly dependent 
upon his circumstances, Scott thought that the income, 
with his own professional earnings, would be sufficient. 
They were therefore married at St. Mary's Church, Car- 
lisle, on 24 December, 1797. 

The Scotts settled at a lodging in George Street, Edin- 
burgh; then at 10 Castle Street; and in 1802 at 39 
Castle Street, a house which Scott bought, and where he 
lived till 1826. The bride's lively tastes were appar- 
ently not quite suited to the habits of Scott's parents; 
but she was warmly welcomed by his friends at the bar 
and among the volunteers. They were both fond of the 
theatre, and heartily enjoyed the simple social amuse- 
ments of the time. Scott's father was failing before the 
marriage, and died in April, 1799. 

Although still courting professional success, Scott now 
began to incline to literature. He had apparently writ- 
ten and burnt a boyish poem on the Conquest of Granada 
about 1786 (Lockhart, p. 37), but afterwards confined 
himself to an occasional ' sonnet to his mistress's eye- 
brow.' In 1796 he heard of the version of Burger's 
Lenore by William Taylor of Norwich, one of the first 
students of German literature. He was stimidated to 
attempt a rival translation, which he began after sup- 



14 LIFE OF 

pel' and finished that night in a state of excitement which 
spoilt his sleep. He published this in October with a 
companion ballad. The Wild Huntsman; the publisher 
being one of his German class. The ballads were praised 
by Dugald Stewart^ George Chalmers, and others; and 
his rival, Taylor, sent him a friendly letter. He had, 
however, many other rivals ; and most of the edition went 
to the trunkmaker. In 1797 William Erskine showed the 
ballads to Matthew Gregory Lewis of the Monk, 
who was then collecting the miscellany called Tales of 
Wonder (1801). He begged for contributions from 
Scott, whom he met on a visit to Scotland. Scott, though 
amused by Lewis's foibles, was flattered by the attentions 
of a well-known author and edified by his criticisms. 
Lewis was also interested by Scott's version of Goethe's 
Goets von Berlichingen. He induced a publisher to give 
25l. for it, with a promise of an equal sum for a second 
edition. It appeared in February, 1799, but failed to 
obtain republication. Another dramatic performance of 
the time was the House of Aspen, an adaptation from 
Der heilige Vehme of G. Wachter; it was offered to 
Kemble by Lewis, and, it is said, put in rehearsal. It 
was not performed, however, and remained unpublished. 
Meanwhile Scott had been writing ballads for Lewis, 
some of which he showed to his friend, James Ballan- 
tyne, who was then publishing a newspaper at Kelso. 
Ballantyne agreed to print twelve copies of these bal- 
lads, which, with a few poems by other authors, ap- 
peared as Apology for Tales of Terror in 1799- Scott 
had suggested that they would serve as advertisements 
of Ballantyne's press to his friends at Edinburgh. He 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 15 

was pleased with the result, and now began to think of 
publishing his collection of Border Ballads^ to be printed 
by Ballantyne. 

The office of sheriiF-depute of Selkirkshire was at this 
time vacant, and Scott had the support of the Duke of 
Buccleuch in an application for the office. Scott's vol- 
unteering had also brought him into close connection 
with Robert Dundas, eldest son of Lord Melville, then 
the great distributor of Scottish patronage. Melville's 
nephews were also interested, and on l6 December, 
1799j Scott was appointed sheriff-depute. It brought 
him 300Z. a year for light work and a closer connection, 
with his favourite district. Scott now set about his 
ballad collection energetically. On 22 April, 1800, he 
wrote to Ballantyne, whom he proposed to entrust with 
the printing, and suggested, at the same time, that Bal- 
lantyne would find a good opening for a printing estab- 
lishment in Edinburgh. Scott's ballad-hunting brought 
him many new acquaintances, who, as usual, became 
warm friends. Among them were Richard Heber, the 
great book-collector, and, through Heber, George Ellis, 
then preparing his Specimens of Early English Ro- 
mances. They kept up an intimate correspondence until 
Ellis's death. Scott managed also to form a friendly 
alliance with the touchy antiquary, Joseph Ritson. He 
took up John Leyden, whose enthusiastic co-operation 
he repaid by many good services. He made the acquaint- 
ance of William Laidlaw, ever afterwards an attached 
friend; and, through Laidlaw, of James Hogg (1770- 
1835), to whom also he was a steady patron. The first 
two volumes of the Border Minstrelsy, printed by Bal- 



16 LIFE OF 

lantyne, were published early in 1802 by Cadell & Da- 
vies, and welcomed by many critics of the time, including 
Miss Seward. Scott received 78l. 10s. for a half -share of 
the profits, and then sold the copyright to the Longmans 
for 5001. This price apparently included a third volume, 
which appeared in 1803. Other editions followed when 
Scott had become famous. The collection included vari- 
ous introductory essays, and showed, as Lockhart re- 
marked, that his mind was already stored with most of 
the incidents and images afterwards turned to account. 
The Minstrelsy had been intended to include the romance 
of Sir Tristram which he and Leyden had persuaded 
themselves to be the work of Thomas of Ercildoune. 
A small edition of this was published separately by Con- 
stable in May, 1804. 

The Minstrelsy included some imitations of the an- 
cient ballad by Scott, Leyden, and others. Glenfinlas, 
written for Lewis in 1799^ was, he says, his ' first serious 
attempt in verses.' Another poem, intended for the 
Minstrelsy, led to more important results {Letters, i, 22). 
The Countess of Dalkeith (afterwards Duchess of Buc- 
cleuch) suggested to him as a fit subject for a ballad 
the legend of Gilpin Horner. Soon afterwards (Sir) 
John Stoddart, on a visit to Scotland, repeated to him 
the then unpublished Christabel. Scott thought the 
metre adapted to such an ' extravaganza ' as he in- 
tended. A verse or two from Christabel was actually 
introduced in Scott's poems; and Coleridge seems after- 
wards to have been a little annoyed by the popularity 
due in part to this appropriation and denied to the more 
poetical original. Scott in his preface of 1830 fully ac- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 17 

knowledges the debt, and in his novels makes frequent 
references to Coleridge's poems. The framework of 
the Last Minstrel was introduced on a hint from W. 
Erskine or George Cranstoun, to whom he had read 
some stanzas; and its form was suggested by the neigh- 
bourhood of Newark Castle to Bowhill, where he had 
met the Countess of Dalkeith. He read the begin- 
ning to Ellis early in 1803. The Lay of the Last Min- 
strel was published at the beginning of 1805 by the 
Longmans and Constable on half profits. The Long- 
mans bought the copyright on a second edition for 500Z., 
Scott thus receiving iQQl. 6s. on the whole. It suc- 
ceeded at once so brilliantly as to determine Scott's fu- 
ture career. 

Scott's literary occupation had naturally told against 
his success at the bar. His professional income had in- 
creased slowly, and in 1802-3 amounted to 228Z. 18*. 
In 1804 his father's business had dwindled in the hands 
of his brother Thomas, and his own prospects suffered. 
In 1804 the lord lieutenant of Selkirkshire complained 
that Scott's military zeal had interfered with the dis- 
charge of his duties as sheriff, and that he was legally 
bound to reside four months in the year within his own 
jurisdiction. Scott had, upon his marriage, taken a cot- 
tage at Lasswade, six miles from Edinburgh, where he 
spent his summers. He now had to look out for a house 
in a more appropriate situation, and took a lease of Ash- 
estiel on the Tweed, near Selkirk. On 10 June, 1804, 
his uncle, Robert Scott, died, leaving him the house at 
Rosebank. He sold this for 5000Z., and, with the sher- 
iff-deputeship and his wife's settlement, had now about 



18 LIFE OF 

lOOOZ. a year independently of, his practice (Lockhart, 
ch. xiii). Ashestiel was in a rustic district, seven miles 
from the nearest town, and in the midst of the Buc- 
cleuch estates. He had plenty of sporting and a small 
sheep farm. He thought of making Hogg his bailiff, 
but took a fancy to Thomas Purdie, who had been 
charged with poaching, and had touched Scott's heart by 
his apology. Purdie became his shepherd, then his 
bailiff, and remained till death an attached friend. 

Scott now resolved, as he says (introd. to the Lay), 
that literature should be his * staff, but not his crutch.' 
He desired to be independent of his pen, though giving 
up hopes of the highest legal preferment. He applied, 
therefore, through Lord Dalkeith (2 February, 1805), 
to Lord Melville for an appointment, which he suc- 
ceeded in obtaining in the following year. Lockhart 
thinks (ib. ch. xv. p. 36) that, besides the Buccleuch 
interest, a hint of Pitt's, who had expressed admiration 
of the Lay, may have been serviceable. George Home, 
one of the ' principal clerks of the quarter session,' was 
becoming infirm ; and, as there was no system of retiring 
pensions, Scott was associated in the office, on the terms 
of doing the duty for nothing during Home's life and 
succeeding to the position on his death. Some formal 
error having been made in the appointment, Scott went 
to London to obtain its rectification, and was afraid that 
upon the change of government advantage might be 
taken of the mistake. His fears were set at rest by 
Lord Spencer, then at the home office, and the appoint- 
ment was gazetted on 8 March, 1806. Scott was for 
the first time received in London as a literary lion, and 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 19 

made the acquaintance of Joanna Baillie, ever after- 
wards a warm friend. The duties of his clerkship 
occupied him from four to six hours daily a week during 
six months of the year, and, though partly mechanical, 
required care and businesslike habits and the study of 
law papers at home. It brought him into close connec- 
tion with his colleagues, the children of the several fam- 
ilies all calling the other fathers * uncle.' Soon after- 
wards he wrote a song, which James Ballantyne sang 
at a public dinner (27 June, 1806), to commemorate the 
failure of Melville's impeachment. He desired, as Lock- 
hart thinks (ib. ch. xv.), to show that his appointment 
had not interfered with his political independence. The 
words ' Tally-ho to the Fox,' used at a time when Fox's 
health was beginning to collapse, gave deep offence; 
and some friends, according to Cockburn {Memorials, 
p. 217), were permanently alienated. The particular 
phrase was of course used without ungenerous inten- 
tion, and Scott paid a compliment to Fox's memory in 
Marmion soon afterwards. But he was now becoming a 
keen partisan. Lockhart observes that during the whig 
ministry his Tory feelings were ' in a very excited state,' 
and that he began to take an active part as a local man- 
ager of political affairs. When Jeffrey playfully com- 
plimented him on a speech before the faculty of advo- 
cates, Scott burst into tears, and declared that the whigs 
would leave nothing of all that made Scotland Scotland. 
Ballantyne had removed to Edinburgh at the end of 
1802, and set up a press in the precincts of Holyrood 
House (Lockhart, ch. xi.). It was called the Border 
Press, and gained a reputation for beauty and correct- 



20 LIFE OF 

ness. Soon after the publication of the Lay, Ballan- 
tyne, who had already received a loan from Scott, found 
that more capital was needed; Scott (ib. eh. xiv.) thought 
it imprudent to make a further advance, but agreed at 
the beginning of 1805 to become a partner in the busi- 
ness. The connection was a secret; and Scott, whose 
writings were now eagerly sought by publishers, at- 
tracted many customers. He arranged that all his own 
books should be printed by Ballantyne, while as a 
printer he became more or less interested in the pub- 
lishing speculations. Scott's sanguine disposition and 
his generous trust in other authors led him also to sug- 
gest a number of literary enterprises, some very costly, 
and frequently ending in failure. Money had to be 
raised; and Scott, who seems to have first taken up Bal- 
lantyne somewhat in the spirit of a border-chief help- 
ing one of his clan, soon caught the spirit of commer- 
cial speculation. The first scheme which he proposed 
was for a collection of British poets, to be published by 
Constable. A similar scheme, in which Thomas Camp- 
bell was to be the editor, was in the contemplation of 
some London publishers. After some attempts at an 
alliance, Scott's scheme was given up; but he took up 
with great energy a complete edition of Dryden. In 
1805 he was also writing for the Edinburgh Review, 
and had made a beginning of Waverley (ib. ch. xiv.) 
The name was probably suggested by Waverly Abbey, 
near Farnham, which was within a ride of Ellis's house 
where he had been recently staying. The first few 
chapters were shown to William Erskine (ib. ch. xxii. p. 
202), and upon his disapproval the task was dropped 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 21 

for a time. Scott now adopted the habits which enabled 
him to carry out his labours. He gave up his previous 
plan of sitting up late, rose at five, dressed carefully, 
was at his desk by six, and before the family breakfast 
had ' broken the neck of the day's work.' A couple of 
hours afterwards he finished the writing, and was his 
' own man ' by noon. At Ashestiel he rode out, coursed 
with his greyhounds or joined in 'burning the water,' 
as described in Guy Mannering. He answered every 
letter the same day, and thus got through a surprising 
amount of work. Lockhart describes (ib. ch. xxvii. p. 
256) how in 1814 a youthful friend of his own was 
irritated by the vision of a hand which he could see, 
while drinking his claret, through the window of a 
neighbouring house, unweariedly adding to a heap of 
manuscripts. It was afterwards identified as Scott's 
hand, then employed upon Waverley; and the anecdote 
shows that he sometimes, at least, wrote into the evening. 
During 1806-7 Scott was hard at work upon Dryden, 
and in the spring of 1807 visited London to make re- 
searches in the British Museum. He was also appointed 
secretary to the parliamentary commission upon Scot- 
tish jurisprudence (ib. ch. xvi.), and took much pains 
in qualifying himself for the duty. An essay upon the 
changes proposed by the commission was afterwards 
contributed by him to the Edinburgh Annual Register 
for 1808 (published 1810), and shows his suspicion of 
the reforms which were being urged by Bentham among 
others (see Bentham, Works, Vol. v.). At the same 
time he was writing Marmion, upon which he says (In- 
troduction of 1830) that he thought it desirable to 



22 LIFE OF 

bestow more care than his previous compositions had 
received. Some of it, especially the battle, was composed 
while he was galloping his charger along Portobello 
Sands during his volunteer exercises (Lockhart, ch. 
xvi.) The introductory epistles, which most of his 
critics thought a disagreeable interruption, were care- 
fully laboured, and at one time advertised for separate 
publication (ib. ch. xvi. p. 154). They are of great 
biographical interest. Constable offered a thousand 
guineas for the poem before seeing it, and Scott at once 
accepted the offer. He had a special need of money 
in consequence of the failure, at the end of 1806, of his 
brother Thomas. Marmion was published on 23 Feb- 
ruary, 1808, and was as successful as the Lay. The 
general applause was interrupted by some sharp criti- 
cism from Jeffrey in the Edinburgh RcvienK Jeffrey, 
besides a general dislike to the romanticism of the new 
school, strangely accused Scott of neglecting ' Scottish 
feelings and Scottish characters.' He sent the Review, 
with a note, to Scott, with whom he was engaged to dine. 
Scott received him with unchanged cordiality, but Mrs. 
Scott sarcastically hoped that he had been well paid by 
Constable for his * abuse ' of his host. Scott himself 
ceased to be a contributor to the Edinburgh, although 
his personal relations with Jeffrey were always friendly 
(see Letters, i. 436-40, ii. 32). Other reasons suffi- 
ciently explain his secession. In November, 1807, he 
had proposed to Southey to become one of Jeffrey's 
contributors, in spite of certain attacks upon Madoc and 
Thalaba. Southey declined, as generally disapproving 
of Jeffrey's politics, and Scott was soon annoyed by 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 23 

what he thought the unpatriotic tone of the Review, 
especially the Cevallos article of October, 1808. He at 
once took up eagerly the scheme for the Quarterly Re- 
view, which was now being started by Murray, who 
visited him in October, 1808 (see Smiles 's Murray, i. 
96 seq.). Canning approved the scheme, and Scott 
wrote to all his friends to get recruits. Lockhart says 
that he could ' fill half a volume with the correspond- 
ence upon this subject' (see, too, GifFord's letters in 
Letters, Vol. ii., appendix). The quarrel with Jeffrey 
involved a quarrel with Constable, the publisher at this 
time of the Edinburgh. Other serious difficulties had 
risen. 

The edition of Dryden in eighteen volumes, with 
Scott's admirable life, had appeared in the last week of 
April, 1808. He had worked hard as an editor, and 
received 7561., or forty guineas a volume. He had by 
October, 1808, prepared an edition of the Sadler Pa- 
pers (published in 1809), and was at work upon a new 
edition of the Somers Tracts, and now, besides some 
other trifles, had undertaken the edition of Swift, for 
which Constable offered him 1500Z. A partner of Con- 
stable's, named Hunter, an intelligent and honourable 
man, but strongly opposed to Scott in politics, was dis- 
satisfied with the Swift bargain. Scott was bitterly 
offended at some of Hunter's language, and on 12 Jan- 
uary, I8O9, wrote an indignant letter breaking off all 
connection with the firm. He had previously engaged 
John (1774-1821), the younger brother of James 
Ballantyne, who had failed in business, to act as clerk 
under the brother. It was now decided to start a pub- 



24 LIFE OF 

lishing firm (John Ballantyne & Co.) in opposition to 
Constable. Scott was to supply half the capital, and 
the other half was to be divided equally betw^een James 
and John. According to Lockhart, Scott had also to 
provide for James's quarter, while John had to borrow 
his quarter either from Scott or someone else (Lock- 
hart, ch. xviii. p. 174). The new firm undertook various 
enterprises, especially the Edinburgh Annual Register, 
to which Southey was a contributor; and Scott now 
hoped, with the alliance of John Murray, to compete 
successfully with Constable. 

In the spring of I8O9 he visited London and saw 
much of his new acquaintance, John Bacon Sawrey Mor- 
ritt, with whom he stayed at Rokeby Park on his 
return. In London he saw much of Canning, Ellis, and 
Croker. The first number of the Quarterly Review, to 
which he contributed three articles, appeared during 
his stay, and he had frequent conferences with John 
Murray concerning the new alliance with Ballantyne. 
This was soon cooled in consequence of John Ballan- 
tyne's modes of doing business (Smiles, John Murray, 
i. 175). 

Scott added to his other distractions a keen interest 
in theatrical matters. He became intimate with J. P. 
Kemble and Mrs. Siddons. In the summer he took a 
share in the theatre at Edinburgh, and induced Henry 
Siddons, the nephew of Mrs. Siddons, to undertake 
the management and to produce as his first play the 
Family Legend of his friend Joanna Baillie. This led 
to a friendship with Daniel Terry, an actor in the Edin- 
burgh company, who shared Scott's taste for curiosities. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 25 

dramatized his novels, and admired him so much as to 
catch a trick of personal likeness. 

In 1810 an act was passed to put in force some of the 
recommendations of the judicature commission. Com- 
pensation was made to the holders of some offices abol- 
ished. Scott had recently appointed a deserving old 
clerk to a vacant place and given the ' extractorship ' 
thus vacated to his brother Thomas. Thomas was now 
pensioned off with ISOZ. a year. The transaction was 
attacked as a job in the House of Lords by Lord Hol- 
land. Thomas had been forced by his difficulties to re- 
treat to the Isle of Man, and did his duty at Edinburgh 
by deputy. The appointment was apparently not out 
of the usual course of things at that period. Scott bit- 
terly resented the attack, and ' cut ' Lord Holland soon 
afterwards at Edinburgh. The quarrel, however, was 
made up in later years. Meanwhile Scott was finish- 
ing his third poem. The Lady of the Lake, He received 
nominally 2000Z. for the copyright, but Ballantyne & 
Co. retained three-fourths of the property. He had 
taken special care to be accurate in details, and repeated 
the king's ride from Loch Vennachar to Stirling, in 
order to assure himself that it could be done in the time. 
The poem was published in May, 1810, and equalled 
the success of its predecessors. There was a rush of 
visitors to Loch Katrine, and the post-horse duty in 
Scotland rose regularly from that date (Lockhart, ch. 
XX. p. 192). From Lockhart's statement it appears that 
twenty thousand copies were sold in the year, the quarto 
edition of 2050 copies being sold for two guineas. This 
success was even more rapid than that of the Lay or 



26 LIFE OF 

Marmion, though the sale of each of the poems down 
to 1825 was about the same, being in each case some- 
thing over thirty thousand. The Lady of the Lake was 
praised by Jeffrey in the Edinburgh, while Ellis (who 
reviewed it in the Quarterly), and Canning entreated 
him to try next time to adopt Dryden's metre. The ex- 
traordinary success of these * novels in verse ' was in 
proportion less to their purely poetical merits than to 
the romantic spirit afterwards more appropriately em- 
bodied in the novels. A poem of which it can be said 
that the essence could be better given in prose is clearly 
not of the highest class, though the lays include many 
touches of most genuine poetry. Scott himself never 
fqrmed an exalted estimate of his own verses. John- 
son's poems, he said, gave him more pleasure than any 
others. His daughter, on being asked what she thought 
of the Lay, said that she had not read it ; ' papa says 
there's nothing so bad for young people as reading bad 
poetry.' His son had never heard of it, and conjec- 
tured as the reason of his father's celebrity that ' it's 
commonly him that sees the hare sitting ' (Lockhart, ch. 
XX. p. 196). The compliment to the Lady which prob- 
ably pleased its author most was from his friend, Adam 
Ferguson, who was serving in Portugal, and had read 
the poem to his comrades, while Ij'^ing under fire at the 
lines of Torres Vedras (ib. ch. xxii. p. 206). Ferguson 
afterwards read to similar audiences the Vision of 
Don Roderick, in Spenserian stanzas, published for the 
benefit of the distressed Portuguese in 1811. This, with 
an imitation of Crabbe and one or two trifles of the 
same period, seems to have resulted from his desire to 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 27 

try his friend's advice of attempting a different style in 
poetry. After finishing the Lay, Scott had again taken 
up Waverley, and again laid it aside upon a discour- 
aging opinion from Ballantyne, who, it seems, wanted 
more Lay. Scott's regular employment was the edition 
of Swift. Meanwhile the publishing business was going 
badly, partly owing to Scott's characteristic patronage of 
other authors. Anna Seward had begun a corre- 
spondence with him on the publication of the Min- 
strelsy. She was not sparing of comically pedantic com- 
pliments, which Scott repaid with praises which, if in- 
sincere, brought a fit punishment. She died in 1809, and 
left him her poems with an injunction to publish them. 
He obeyed, and the firm suffered by the three volumes, 
which appeared in the autumn of 1810. Another un- 
lucky venture was the edition of Beaumont and Fletcher 
by Henry William Weber. Scott had taken him for 
an amanuensis in 1804 when he was a half-starved 
bookseller's hack. Though Weber was a Jacobin in 
principles, and given occasionally to drink, Scott helped 
him frequently, till 1814 he went mad; and afterwards 
supported him till his death in 1818. Unluckily, Scott 
also put too much faith in his client's literary capacity, 
and lost heavily by publishing his work. Somewhat 
similar motives prompted him to publish the History of 
the Culdees, by his old friend John Jamieson, and 
another heavy loss was caused by the Tixall poetry. 
The Edinburgh Annual Register, in which he was glad 
to employ Southey, caused a loss of never less than 
lOOOZ. a year. Scott's professional income, however, 
was now improved. The reconstitution of the court of 



28 LIFE OF 

session enabled Home to retire from the clerkship on a 
pension, and from January, 1812, Scott received the sal- 
ary, as well as performed the duties, of his office. The 
salary was fixed at 1300Z., which was a clear addition to 
his previous income. As his lease of Ashestiel was end- 
ing, he resolved to buy a place of his own. He paid 
4000Z. for an estate about five miles further down the 
Tweed, to which he gave the name of Abbotsford. It 
included a meadow on the Tweed, one hundred acres of 
rough land, and a small farmhouse (a facsimile plan of 
Abbotsford in 1811 is given at the end of Letters, Vol. 
i.) The neighbourhood of Melrose Abbey, to which the 
lands had formerly belonged, was an additional attrac- 
tion. Scott at once set about planting and building, 
with the constant advice of his friend Terry. He moved 
into the house from Ashestiel in May, 1812. He wrote 
here, amid the noise of masons, in the only habitable 
room, of which part had been screened off for him by an 
old curtain. He engaged as a tutor for the children 
George Thomson, son of the minister of Melrose, 
who lived with him many years, and was the original of 
Dominie Sampson. While amusing himself with his 
planting and his children, he was now writing Rohehy 
and The Bridal of Triermain. He visited Morritt at 
Rokeby in the autumn, to refresh his impressions, and 
the book was published at Christmas, 1812, and was fol- 
lowed in two months by Triermain. Although an edi- 
tion of three thousand two-guinea copies of Rokeby was 
sold at once, and ten thousand copies went off in a few 
months, its success was very inferior to that of its pred- 
ecessors. Scott attributes this to various causes (Pref- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 29 

ace of 1830), such as the unpoetical character of the 
Roundheads. A ' far deeper ' cause, as he says, was 
that his style had lost its novelty by his own repetitions 
and those of his many imitators. He was writing with 
less vivacity; and Moore, in the Twopenny Postbag, hit 
a blot by saying that Scott had left the border, and 
meant * to do all the gentlemen's seats on the way ' to 
London. Another cause assigned by Scott was that he 
had been eclipsed by Byron, whose poems he cordially 
admired. Murray brought Scott into communication 
with Byron on the publication of Childe Harold in 1812. 
Byron reported compliments from the prince regent to 
Scott, and apologized for the sneer at Marmion in Eng- 
lish Bards and Scotch Reviewers. They afterwards met 
on very friendly terms. Scott wrote a generous review 
of Byron, at his final departure from England, by which 
Byron was much gratified (^Quarterly, Vol. iv.), and 
Lady Byron, though complaining of certain misunder- 
standings, acknowledged Scott's good intentions, and 
was cordially received by him soon afterwards at Ab- 
botsford. The Bridal of Triermain, which was com- 
posed as a relief to Rokeby, was published anonymously, 
and Scott endeavoured to spread the impression that 
William Erskine, who had suggested the poem and con- 
sented to humour the jest, was its author. 

The afi'airs of Ballantyne & Co. had now reached a 
serious crisis. Scott had made up his personal quarrel 
with Constable in 1810, and had some friendly commu- 
nications with him (ib. ch. xx. p. 192). The edition of 
Swift had remained on Constable's hands. In May, 
1813, Scott consented, though reluctantly, to apply to 



30 LIFE OF 

Constable for help in Ballantyne's affairs, engaging 
that the publishing business should be wound up if 
proper terms could be obtained. The printing concern 
was bringing in about I8OOZ. a year. Constable exam- 
ined the books in August, and reported that the liabili- 
ties were about 15,000L, and that the assets, if they 
could be realized, would about balance them (Archibald 
Constable, iii. 31). It was, however, a period of finan- 
cial difficulty, and it was impossible to dispose of the 
stock and copyrights in time. An advance was neces- 
sary to meet the immediate difficulties. Scott hereupon 
applied to his friend, the Duke of Buccleuch, who had, 
as he observed, the * true spirit of a border chief ' (ib. 
iii. 23), and who at once agreed to guarantee an advance 
of 4000Z. by a London banker. Constable had already 
in May agreed to take part of the stock of the Ballan- 
tynes for 2000^., which was ultimately resold to the trade 
at a great loss. Much more was still left on hand. John 
Ballantyne set up as an auctioneer, though he continued 
to act as Scott's agent for the Waverley Novels. In 
January, 1816, a new arrangement was made, under 
which James Ballantyne became simply Scott's agent, re- 
ceiving a salary of 400Z. a year for managing the print- 
ing business. The affairs of this and the publishing 
business had become indistinguishable. John Ballan- 
tyne said the publishing business was wound up with a 
clear balance of lOOOZ. in consequence of Scott's energy. 
The new firm took over, according to Lockhart (p. 451), 
liabilities to the amount of 10,000L Scott complained 
much in 1813 of having been kept in ignorance by his 
partners of the real state of affairs; and it seems that 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 31 

the printing, as well as the publishing, office had been 
in difficulties from an early period. The printing busi- 
ness, however, was substantially a good one, and, now 
that the publishing was abandoned, might be expected 
to thrive. For two or three years after the arrangement 
with Constable the affairs of the firm were in a very 
critical state, and Scott was put to many straits for rais- 
ing money. He cordially admitted his obligations to Con- 
stable's sagacity and help, while he begged John Ballan- 
tyne to treat him ' as a man, and not as a milch-cow * 
(Lockhart, ch. xxvi. p. 246). Scott, however, was san- 
guine by nature, and had sufficiently good prospects. 
His income, he says (24 August, 1813), was over 20001, 
a year, and he was owner of Abbotsford and the house 
in Castle Street. He was clear that no one could ulti- 
mately be a loser by him. Just at this time the regent 
offered him the poet-laureateship, which he erroneously 
supposed to be worth 400Z. a year. It had fallen into 
such discredit that he feared to be ridiculed for taking 
it, and declined on the ground that he could not write 
the regular odes then imperative, and that his legal 
offices were a sufficient provision. In the midst of his 
difficulties he was sending 50Z, to Maturin, then in dis- 
tress, and was generous to other struggling authors 
while pressed to pay his family expenses. 

Unfortunately, Scott had been seized with a passion 
for adding to his landed property. A property was for 
sale which would extend his estate from the Tweed to 
the Cauldshiels loch; and to raise the money he offered, 
in June, 1813, to sell an unwritten poem (afterwards 
The Lord of the Isles) to Constable for 5000Z. Though 



32 LIFE OF 

the literary negotiation failed, he bought the land, and 
was at the same time buying ' a splendid lot of ancient 
armour ' for his museum. 

On 1 July, 1814, appeared Scott's edition of Swift in 
nineteen volumes, which was reviewed by Jeffrey in the 
Edinburgh at Constable's request. Jeffrey praised 
Scott, but his hostile estimate of Swift was thought by 
Constable to have injured the sale of the works. In the 
midst of his troubles Scott had accidentally found his old 
manuscript of Waverley in looking for some fishing 
tackle. He thought that his critics, Erskine and Bal- 
lantyne, had been too severe; and in the last three weeks 
of June, 1814, wrote the two concluding volumes. The 
book appeared on 7 July, 1814. The first edition of one 
thousand copies was sold in five weeks, and a sixth had 
appeared before the end of a year. Constable had 
offered 700Z. for the copyright, which Scott said was too 
little if it succeeded, and too much if it failed. It was 
therefore published upon half profits. On 29 July Scott 
sailed upon a cruise with the lighthouse commissioners, 
in which he was accompanied by his friend William 
Erskine and others. They visited the Orkney and Shet- 
land islands, and returned by the Hebrides, reaching 
Greenock on 8 September. The delightful journal pub- 
lished in Lockhart's Life gives a graphic picture of 
Scott's charm as a travelling companion, and his keen 
delight in the scenery, the antiquities, and the social 
condition of the people. He turned his experience to 
account in The Pirate and The Lord of the Isles. On 
returning he received the news of the death of his old 
friend the Duchess of Buccleuch, whoj as Countess of 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 33 

Dalkeith, had suggested The Lay of the Last Minstrel. 
He found also that Waverley was making a startling 
success. For the time he had other pieces of work in 
hand. Besides writing articles on chivalry and the 
drama for Constable's Supplement to the Encyclopaedia 
Britannica, and other minor pieces of work, he had 
finally agreed, while passing through Edinburgh, for 
The Lord of the Isles. Constable gave 1500Z. for half 
the copyright. It was rapidly finished, and published 
on 18 January, 1815. Though it was about as popular 
as RoJceby, Scott became aware that the poetical vein 
was being exhausted. When Ballantyne told him of the 
comparative failure, he received the news after a mo- 
ment with ' perfect cheerfulness,' and returned to work 
upon the conclusion of his second novel, Guy Manner- 
ing, which, as Lockhart calculates, was written in six 
weeks, about Christmas, 1814. The success of his novels 
encouraged him to make new purchases. ' Money,' he 
writes to Morritt in November, 1814, 'has been tum- 
bling in upon me very fast ' ; his pinches from ' long 
dated bills ' are over, and he is therefore buying land 
{Letters, i. 351). 

For the next ten years Scott was pouring out the 
series of novels, displaying an energy and fertility of 
mind which make the feat one of the most remarkable 
recorded in literary history. The main interruption was 
in 1815. All his patriotic feelings had been stirred to 
the uttermost by the concluding scenes of the war; and 
he went to France in August, visited Waterloo, saw the 
allies in Paris, met the Duke of Wellington and Lord 
Castlereagh, was courteously received by Blucher, and 



34 LIFE OF 

kissed by the hetman Platoff. For Wellington he had 
the highest admiration, and wondered that the hero 
should care for the author of a ' few bits of novels.' 
Scott's impressions on this tour were described by him 
in Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk (1816), and in a 
poem on the Field of Waterloo, published in October, 
1815, for the benefit of soldiers' widows, and an admit- 
ted failure. His last poem of any length, Harold the 
Dauntless, was published in January, 1817, as by the 
author of Triermain, and had, says Lockhart, ' consid- 
erable success,' but not such as to encourage him to fur- 
ther attempts in the same line. 

The Waverley Novels, on the contrary, had at once 
become the delight of all readers, even of those who, 
like Hazlitt, detested Scott from a political point of view. 
Scott had determined to be anonymous, and the secret 
was at first confided only to his publishers and to his 
friends Morritt and Erskine. In his preface of 1830, 
and in some letters of the time, Scott gives reasons for 
this decision which are scarcely convincing. The most 
intelligible is his dislike to be accepted as an author, 
and forced to talk about his own books in society. This 
fell in with his low estimate of literary reputation in 
general. He considered his writings, chiefly as the means 
of supporting his position as a gentleman, and would 
rather be received as Scott of Abbotsford than the 
author of the Waverley Novels. When writing his 
earlier books, as Lockhart shows, he had frankly con- 
sulted his friends; but as he became more of a pro- 
fessional author, he was less disposed to wear the char- 
acter publicly. It is probable his connection with the 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 35 

BaKantynes had an effect in this change. He began 
to take a publisher's point of view, and was afraid of 
making his name too cheap. Whatever his motives, he 
adhered to his anonymity, and in agreements with Con- 
stable introduced a clause that the publisher should be 
liable to a penalty of 2,000Z. if the name of the author 
were revealed (ib. ch. xliii. and liv. pp. 388, 469). He 
says, in his preface, that he considered himself to be 
entitled to deny the authorship flatly if the question 
were put to him directly. It was reported that he had 
solemnly disavowed Waverley to the prince regent, who 
entertained him at dinner in the spring of 1815. Scott, 
however, told Ballantyne that the question had not been 
put to him, though he evaded the acknowledgment when 
the regent proposed his health as the ' author of 
Waverley.' (For a similar story see Smile's John Mur- 
ray, i. 474). From the first, the most competent readers 
guessed the truth. It was sufficiently intimated by 
Jeffrey in his review of Waverley, and the constant use 
in the novels of his own experiences gave unmistakable 
evidence to all his familiars. Less intimate friends, 
such as Southey and Sydney Smith, speak without doubt 
of his authorship. The letters on the authorship of 
Waverley, by John Leycester Adolphus in 1821, gave 
a superfluous, though ingenious, demonstration of the 
fact. Scott countenanced a few rumours attributing 
the novels to others, especially to his brother, Thomas 
Scott, now in Canada. Thomas, he suggested, need not 
officiously reject the credit of the authorship. Murray 
believed this report in 1817; and a discovery of the same 
statement in a Canadian paper led a Mr, W. J. Fitz- 



36 LIFE OF 

gerald to write a pamphlet, in 1855, attributing the 
authorship (partly at least) to Thomas (see Notes and 
Queries f 1st ser., Vols. I. and II.). 

Scott said that his first suggestion of novels intended 
to portray Scottish character came from Miss Edge- 
worth's Irijjii stories. He sent her a copy of Waverley 
and warm compliments from the anonymous author. 
Scott's sympathetic reproduction of the national char- 
acteristics was of course combined with the power, which 
distinguished his novels from all previous works, of 
giving life to history and to the picturesque and vanish- 
ing forms of society. His feudalism and toryism were 
other aspects of his intense interest in the old order 
broken down by the revolution. He was also pouring 
out the stores of anecdote and legend and the vivid im- 
pressions of the s'-enery which he had been imbibing 
from his early childhood while rambling through the 
country in close and friendly intercourse with all classes. 
Scott's personal charm, his combination of masculine 
sense with wide and generous sympathy, enabled him to 
attract an unprecedentedly numerous circle of readers to 
these almost impromptu utterances of a teeming imagi- 
nation. 

Ivanhoe, which appeared at the end of 1819? marked 
a new departure. Scott was now drawing upon his read- 
ing instead of his personal experience, and the book 
has not the old merit of serious portraiture of real life. 
But its splendid audacity, its vivid presentation of 
mediaeval life, and the dramatic vigour of the narrative, 
may atone for palpable anachronisms and melodramatic 
impossibilities. The story at once achieved the popu- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 37 

larity which it has always enjoyed, and was more suc- 
cessful in England than any of the so-called ' Scottish 
novels.' It was Scott's culminating success in a book- 
selling sense, and marked the highest point both of his 
literary and his social prosperity. 

The year was indeed a sad one for Scott. He had 
been deeply grieved by the death of the (fourth) Duke 
of Buccleuch on 20 April, 1819. He lost his mother, 
between whom and himself there had been a cordial 
affection, on 24 December. Her brother, Dr. Ruther- 
ford, and her sister had died on the 20th and 22d of 
the same month. His own health was in so serious a 
state at the publication of the Tales in June that the 
general impression was that he would write no more. 
He had been suddenly attacked, in March, 1817, by 
violent cramps of the stomach. Similar attacks were 
repeated during the next two years, and the change in 
his appearance shocked his acquaintances. In April, 
1819^ Scott himself took a solemn leave of his children, 
in expectation of immediate death. The Earl of Buchan 
had already designed a splendid funeral, and tried to 
force his way into the patient's room to comfort him by 
explaining the details. The attacks caused intense 
agony, which he bore with unflinching courage. When 
unable to write he dictated to Ballantyne and Laidlaw 
in the midst of his sufFerin-g. The greatest part of the 
Bride of Lammei'moor, the Legend of Montrose, and 
Ivanhoe, was written under these conditions (Ballan- 
tyne's full account is printed in Journal, i. 408). James 
Ballantyn-e testified to the remarkable fact that Scott, 
while remembering the story upon which the Bride of 



38 LIFE OF 

Lammermoor was founded, had absolutely forgotten his 
own novel, and read it upon its appearance as entirely 
new to him. The attacks were repeated in 1820, but 
became less violent under a new treatment. 

Scott's growing fame had made him the centre of a 
wide and varied social circle. In Edinburgh he was 
much occupied by his legal as well as literary duties, 
and kept early hours, which limited his social engage- 
ments. In the evenings he enjoyed drives in the lovely 
scenery and rambles in the old town. Every Sunday 
he entertained his old cronies, who were chiefly of the 
tory persuasion. The bitterness of political divisions 
in Scotland divided society into two sections, though 
Scott occasionally met Jeffrey and other whigs ; and 
Cockburn testifies (Memorials, p. 267) that the only 
question among them at an early period used to be 
whether his poetry or his talk was the more delightful. 
The Edinburgh Reviewers talked Adam Smith and 
Dugald Stewart, and aimed at epigrammatic smartness, 
while Scott simply poured out the raw material of the 
Waverley Novels, and one may easily believe that his 
easy humour was more charming than their brilliance. 
He took part also in the jovial dinners, where he was 
the idol of his courtiers, the Ballantynes, and where the 
dignified Constable occasionally appeared. Scott him- 
self was temperate, ate little after a hearty breakfast, 
and was as indifferent to cookery as to music. He kept 
up the ponderous ceremonial of the ' toasts ' and ' senti- 
ments ' of the old-fashioned dinners (Cockburn, Me- 
morials, p. 40), at which the Ballantynes would read 
specimens of the forthcoming novel. It was at Ab- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 39 

botsford that Scott was in his glory. He had from the 
first been eager to extend his property. In 1816, ac- 
cording to Lockhart, the estate had grown from one 
hundred and fifty to nearly one thousand acres bj'^ 
purchases from small holders, who took advantage of 
his eagerness to exact extravagant prices. In 1817 he 
settled his old friend William Laidlaw on one of his 
farms at Kaeside. In 1817 he also bought the house 
and land of Huntly Burn for 10,000Z., upon which next 
spring he settled Adam Ferguson, now retired on half- 
pay. In 1819 he was contemplating a purchase of 
Faldonside for 30,000Z. This was not carried out, 
though he was still hankering after it in 1825 (LeHers, 
ii. 260, 347) ; but in 1821, according to Lockhart, he 
had spent 29,OOOL on land (Ballantyne Humbug, p. 
93). He had set about building as soon as he came into 
possession, and a house-warming, to celebrate the com- 
pletion of his new house, took place in November, 1818. 
Beginning with a plan for an ' ornamental cottage,' he 
gradually came to an imitation of a Scottish baronial 
castle. 

At Abbotsford Scott was visited by innumerable ad- 
mirers of all ranks. American tourists, including 
Washington Irving and George Ticknor, English trav- 
ellers of rank, or of literary and scientific fame, such 
as Sir Humphrey Davy, Miss Edgworth, Wordsworth, 
Moore, and many others, stayed with him at different 
periods, and have left many accounts of their experience. 
His businesslike habits enabled him during his most 
energetic labours to spend most of his mornings out of 
doors, and to give his evenings to society. His guests 



40 ' LIFE OF 

unanimously celebrate his perfect simplicity and dignity, 
as well as the charm of his conversation and skill in 
putting all his guests at their ease. The busiest writer 
of the day appeared to be entirely absorbed in enter- 
taining his friends. He was on intimate terms with all 
his neighbours, from the Duke of Buccleuch to Tom 
Purdie, and as skilful in chatting to the labourers, in 
whose planting he often took an active share, as in 
soothing the jealousies of fine ladies. He had annually 
two grand celebrations, devoted to SJjlmon-fishing and 
coursing, which brought the whole country-side to- 
gether, and gave a ' kirn,' or harvest-home, to his peas- 
antry. Scott was always surrounded by his dogs, of 
whom the bulldog Camp, and the deerhound Maida are 
the most famous. On Camp's death in 1809 he gave 
up an engagement, for the loss ' of a dear old friend.' 
Maida died in 1824, and was celebrated by an epitaph, 
translated into Latin by Lockhart. Even a pig took a 
' sentimental attachment ' to him. Probably few men 
have charmed so many fellow-creatures of all classes. 

His family was now growing up. Scott had made 
companions of his children, and never minded their 
interruptions. He cared little for the regular educa- 
tional systems, but tried them in poetry and history by 
his talk, and taught them to ride and speak the truth. 
The boys were sent to the high school from their home. 
In 1819 the eldest, Walter, joined the 18th hussars, in 
spite of his father's preference for the bar. Scott's 
letters to him are full of admirable good sense and 
paternal confidence. The eldest daughter, Sophia, 
married John Gibson Lockhart in April, 1820. The 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 41 

Lockharts took the cottage of Chiefswood upon the 
Abbots ford estate, where they became valuable elements 
of Scott's circle. 

At the end of 1818 Lord Sidmouth informed Scott of 
the prince regent's desire to confer a baronetcy upon 
him. Scott's hesitation was overcome by the prospect 
of an inlieritance from his brother-in-law, Charles Car- 
penter, who had left a reversion of his property to his 
sister's children. It was estimated at 40,000Z. or 50,- 
000/., though it turned out to be only half that amount. 
The actual appointment was delayed by his illness till 
SO March, 1820, when he went to London, and kissed 
the new king's hands. George IV at the same time 
directed Lawrence to paint a portrait of Scott, as the 
beginning of a series for the great gallery at Windsor. 
Both Oxford and Cambridge offered him an honorary 
degree in 1820; but he was unable to present himself 
for the purpose. In the same year he was induced to 
accept the rather incongruous position of president of 
the Royal Society of Scotland. If he knew little of 
science, he succeeded in making friends of scientific 
men and giving charm to their meetings. Scott was 
informed in 1823 that the 'author of Waverley ' was 
elected member of the Roxburghe Club, and consented 
to act as locum tenens of the ' great unknown.' He 
founded the Bannatyne Club the same year, and took 
a very active part in it for the rest of his life. He was 
also, about 1823, elected to ' The Club.' 

In 1821 Scott attended the coronation of George IV, 
and wrote a description for Ballantyne's Edinburgh 
Weekly Journal ' (given in Lockhart, p. 454, &c.). In 



42 LIFE OF 

1822 he took a leading part in the reception of George 
IV at Edinburgh. He arranged the details; coaxed 
highland chiefs and lowland baillies into good humor, 
wrote appropriate ballads, and showed an enthusiasm 
scarcely justified by the personal character of the mon- 
arch. He begged a glass out of which the king had 
drunk his health to be kept as a relic, and sat down 
upon it, fortunately injuring only the glass (Lockhart, 
ch. Ivi.). He was amused by the visit at this time of 
the poet Crabbe, with whom he had previously corre- 
sponded, and profoundly saddened by the melancholy 
death of his old, and it seems his dearest, friend, 
William Erskine. Scott had to snatch opportunities in 
the midst of the confusion to visit the dying man. 
During this period Scott's toryism and patriotic feeling 
were keenly excited. In January, 1819, he had taken 
extraordinary interest in tlie discovery of the Scottish 
regalia, which had been locked up at the time of the 
union and were reported to have been sent to England. 
On the king's visit, he applied for the restoration to 
Edinburgh of ' Mons Meg,' then in the Tower of London, 
which was ultimately returned in 1829. He petitioned 
at the same time also for the restoration of the Scottish 
peerages forfeited in 1715 and 1745. He had some 
connection with more important political aifairs. The 
popular discontent in 1819 had induced Scott and some 
of his neighbours to raise a volunteer force in the loyal 
districts, to be prepared against a supposed combination 
of Glasgow artisans and Northumberland colliers. The 
force was to be called the ' Buccleuch legion,' and Scott 
was ready to take the command. The political bitter- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 43 

ness roused by this and the queen's trial led to the 
starting of the notorious Beacon in 1821. Scott was 
induced to be one of the subscribers to a bond for rais- 
ing the necessary funds. He was considered to be 
partly responsible for the virulent abuse which the 
paper directed against the whigs, and which led to the 
duel in which Sir Alexander Boswell was killed 
in March, 1822. Sir James Gibson Craig intended, 
according to Cockburn {Memorials, p. 382), to send 
a challenge to Scott, but refrained on receiving an 
assurance that Scott was not personally concerned. 
The paper was suppressed, and Scott was as much dis- 
gusted by the cowardice as by the previous imprudence. 
Cockburn complains that the young tories who indulged 
in this warfare were encouraged by his 'chuckling' 
over their libels instead of checking them. He was, as 
Cockburn says, flattered by their admiration into con- 
doning offences, though there ' could not be a better 
natured or a better hearted man.' It must be added 
that, as Mr. Lang has shown {Life of Lockhart, i. 19*, 
etc.), Scott seriously disapproved of the personalities, 
and remonstrated eifectually with Lockhart. Scott in 
1821 adopted plans, for the 'completion of Abbots- 
ford' (Lockhart, ch. liv.). The masonry was finished 
and the roof being placed in October, 1822 (ib., ch. 
Iviii.). He amused himself by introducing gas, then 
a novelty, the glare from which was, as Lockhart thinks, 
bad for his health, and a bell-ringing device, which 
was a failure. During 1824 he was occupied in per- 
sonally superintending the decorations. Most of the 
furniture was made on the spot by local carpenters 



44 LIFE OF 

and tailors, to whom Scott showed his usual kindness. 
' He speaks to every man/ said one of them, ' as if he 
were a blood relation.' The painting was carried out by 
a young man whom Scott had judiciously exhorted to 
stick to his trade instead of trying to rival Wilkie, and 
who prospered in consequence. At the end of 1824 the 
house was at last finished, and a large party assembled 
at Christmas. On 7 January, 1825, there was a ball 
in honour of Miss Jobson of Lochore, a young lady 
with 60,000Z. who, on 3 February following, was married 
to Scott's son Walter. Scott had bought a captaincy 
for his son for 3,500Z. He now settled the estate of 
Abbotsford ujDon the married pair, in accordance with 
the demands of her guardian. 

The whole expenditure upon Abbotsford is estimated 
by Sir J. Gibson Craig at 76,0001. (letter to Miss Edge- 
worth). In the summer Scott made a tour in Ireland, 
visited his son, then quartered at Dublin, and Miss Edge- 
worth, who accompanied him to Killarney. He was 
everywhere received with an enthusiasm which made the 
journey, as he said, ' an ovation.' He visited the ' ladies 
of Llangollen ' on his way home, and met Canning at 
the English lakes. A grand regatta, with a procession 
of fifty barges, was arranged upon Windermere, in 
which Wilson acted as * admiral,' and Wordsworth joined 
the party. Scott reached Abbotsford on 1 September, 
and soon heard the first news of approaching calamity. 

Meanwhile the speculative fever, which culminated in 
the crisis of 1825-6, was reaching its height. Constable 
and Cadell found themselves in difficulties in the au- 
tumn. Hurst, Robinson & Co., their London agents. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 45 

with whom they had many transactions, were hard 
pressed, having, it is said, indulged, among other things, 
in a large speculation upon hops. In November Lock- 
hart heard a report that Constable's London banker had 
' thrown up his book.' He told Scott, who was incredu- 
lous, but drove at once to Constable by night, and came 
back with the news that the business was ' as firm as 
Benlomond.' Scott's alarm gave the first hint to his 
family of the closeness of the connection with Ballan- 
tyne. His subsequent history is fully told in the Jour- 
nal which he began to keep at this time. Though freely 
used by Lockhart, its publication in full in 1890 first 
revealed the full interest of this most pathetic piece of 
autobiography. In December, Scott was seriously 
alarmed, and at- the end of the year borrowed 10,000/. 
which his son's settlement empowered him to raise upon 
Abbotsford. This, he thought, would make Ballantyne 
secure, but he was anxious about Constable. A severe at- 
tack of illness at Christmas was aggravated by anxiety. 
In January, Constable, after a delay from illness, went to 
London and found that matters were almost desperate. 
Among other schemes for borrowing, he proposed that 
Scott should raise 20,000/. Scott, with Cadell's advice, 
absolutely refused, saying that he had advanced enough 
for other people's debts, and must now pay his own. 
This led to Scott's later alliance with Cadell, who had 
fallen out with his old partner. On 16 January Scott 
received decisive news of the stoppage of payment by 
Hurst & Robinson, which involved the fall of Constable 
and of Ballantyne. He dined that day with Skene, ap- 
parently in his usual spirits. Next morning, before 



16 LIFE OF 

going to the court, he told Skene that he was a beggar, 
and that his ruin must be made public. He felt ' rather 
sneaking ' when he showed himself in court. Cockburn 
(Memorials, p. 431) says that there was no feeling but 
sympathy. When some of his friends talked of raising 
money, he replied, ' No, this right hand shall work it all 
off.' In spite of business, he wrote a chapter of Wood- 
stock every day that week, finishing ' twenty printed 
pages ' on the 19th. 

The liabilities of Constable, according to Lockhart, 
amounted to 256,000Z., those of Hurst, Robinson & Co. 
to near 300,000^, and those of Ballantyne & Co. to 117,- 
000^ The first two firms became bankrupt and paid 2*. 
6d. and 1*. Sd. in the pound respectively. Much con- 
troversy followed with little definite results, as to the 
apportionment of responsibility for this catastrophe. 
The immediate cause was the system of accommodation 
between the firms of Constable and Ballantyne. Sir J. 
Gibson Craig, who was thoroughly acquainted with the 
facts, throws the chief blame on Scott. Craig was in 
Constable's confidence from the first difficulties of 1813. 
Though a strong whig, he behaved generously as one of 
Scott's chief creditors. Constable's loss, according to 
him, originated ' in a desire to benefit Scott, which Sir 
Walter had always the manliness to acknowledge.' Con- 
stable had supported the Ballantynes, but had found it 
necessary to take bills from them in order to protect 
himself. When affairs became serious, he took all these 
bills to Scott, offering to exchange them for those 
granted to Scott. Scott being unable to do this. Con- 
stable was forced to discount the bills, and upon his 



iH 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 47 

insolvency Scott became responsible for both sets of 
bills, thus incurring a loss of about 40,000Z, 

Constable was a shrewd man of business, and en- 
gaged in speculations sound in themselves and ulti- 
mately profitable. It is, however, abundantly clear that, 
from want of sufficient capital, he was from the first 
obliged to raise credit on terms which, as his partner 
Cadell said, ' ran away with all their gains.' Cadell was 
anxious in 1822 to retire in consequence of his anxie- 
ties (Smiles, Murray, i. 185, etc.; Constable, iii. 236). 
Though Constable's regard for Scott was undoubtedly 
genuine, his advances meant that he was anxious to mo- 
nopolise the most popular author of the day, and the 
profit on the Waverley Novels was a main support of his 
business. He was therefore both ready to supply Scott 
with credit and anxious not to alarm him by making 
difficulties. Scott was completely taken by surprise 
when Constable failed. ' No man,' he says (^Journal, 29 
January, 1826), 'thought (Constable's) house worth 
less than 150,000/.' Had Constable stood, Scott would 
have stood too. The problem remains why Scott should 
not have been independent of Constable. From 1816 
to 1822 James Ballantyne had been simply Scott's paid 
manager. In 1822 Scott had again taken him into part- 
nership, carefully defining the terms in a ' missive let- 
ter ' (printed in the Ballantyne Humbug). He spoke of 
the business as ' now so flourishing.' Profits were to be 
equally divided; but Scott undertook to be personally 
responsible for bills then due by the firm to the amount 
of about SOjOOOL This sum had been increased before 
the bankruptcy to about 46;000L The substantial ques- 



48 LIFE 'OF 

tion in the controversy between lyockhart and Ballan- 
tyne's trustees was whether Scott or Ballantyne was 
mainly responsible for this accumulation of indebted- 
ness. That Scott's extravagant expenditure contributed 
to the catastrophe is of course clear. Had he not wasted 
money at Abbots ford, he would have been able to put 
his business in a sound position. It is, however, dis- 
puted how far the accumulation of bills was caused by 
Ballantyne's shiftlessness or by Scott's direct drafts 
upon the business. 

The Ballantyne connection had undoubtedly been a 
misfortune. James was inefficient and John reckless. 
They had apparently been in debt from the first, and 
had initiated Scott in the system of bill-discounting. 
Scott was in a thoroughly false position when he con- 
cealed himself behind his little court of flatterers rather 
than counsellors. He became involved in petty intrigues 
and reckless dealing in money. The failure of the pub- 
lishing house, indeed, was due in great part to Scott's 
injudicious speculations. A debt apparently remained 
when the publishing was finally abandoned, in spite of 
Scott's ultimate disposal of the stock. The printing 
business, however, was sound and made good profits even 
after the crash, under James Ballantyne's management 
(cf. Ballantyne Humbug, p. 109, and Reply, p. 118). 
Why, then, should the debt have continued to grow 
when, after 1816, the publishing had ceased? The 
new firm — that is, Scott — had taken over, according to 
Lockhart, some 10,000Z. of the old liabilities, and this, if 
not paid off, would of course accumulate (Lockhart, ch. 
lii. p. 45 In). Ballantyne's trustees, however, argue 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 49 

that Scott's assumption of the debt in 1822 proves Iiis 
consciousness that it had been created for his private 
purposes. They show conclusively that Scott was fully 
cognizant of all the bill transactions, and directing Bal- 
lantyne at every step in making provision for bills as 
they came due. When Scott had become aware of the 
entanglements of 1813, he had remonstrated energetic- 
ally and done his best to clear them off. Could he have 
submitted to a repetition of the same process on behalf 
of the ' flourishing (printing) business ' had he not been 
aware that the debt was being incurred for his own re- 
quirements .'* Lockhart wonders that Scott, who could 
have told what he had spent on turnpikes for thirty 
years, should never have looked into his own affairs. 
Scott was not so ignorant as Lockhart implies. He had 
apparently become accustomed to the bill-discounting, 
while he fully believed that he was investing the pro- 
ceeds safely. Lockhart denies {Ballantyne Humbug, p. 
94) that Scott drew sums from the business in behalf of 
his own private needs. But the accounts published by the 
trustees show that large sums had been advanced during 
the partnership (1822-1826) for Scott's building and 
other expenses. He had thus drawn out 15,000L, more 
than he had paid in. Scott, of course, was personally 
responsible for these sums; but he injured the firm by 
saddling it with a bad debt. Whatever, therefore, may 
have been Ballantyne's inefficiency, and the automatic 
accumulation of debt by renewing bills, it is hardly to 
be doubted that Scott encumbered the business by using 
it as his instrument in raising money for his own pur- 
poses. It belonged to him exclusively at the time when 



50 LIFE OF 

his outlay on Abbotsford was greatest, and he had been 
the real creator of the business. He seems to have 
spoken the simple truth when he told Lockhart on 20 
January, 1826, that he had not suffered by Ballantyne; 
' I owe it to him to say that his difficulties, as well as 
his advantages, are owing to me.' 

The Ballantynes also complain that the settlement of 
Abbotsford in January, 1825, put the bulk of his prop- 
erty beyond the reach of his creditors, without, as they 
state, due notice to Ballantyne. Scott, as Lockhart 
urges, clearly imagined himself at this time to be per- 
fectly solvent, and certainly did not in any way conceal 
the transaction, of which Constable at least was quite 
aware. Up to the last he seems to have felt not a trace 
of misgiving. 

Scott will be severely judged by critics who hold, with 
Carlyle, that an author should be a prophet. Scott was 
neither a Wordsworth nor a Goethe, but an ' auld Wat ' 
come again, and forced by circumstances to substitute 
publishing for cattle-lifting. The sword was still in- 
trinsically superior in his eyes to the pen. His strong 
common sense and business training kept him from prac- 
tical anachronisms, and gave that tinge of ' worldliness ' 
to his character which Lockhart candidly admits, but 
his life was an embodiment of the genial and masculine 
virtues of the older type so fondly celebrated in his 
writings. 

A passionate patriotism in public and cordial loy- 
alty to his friends mark his whole career. A chief 
(in one of his favourite quotations) should be ' a hedge 
about his friends, a heckle to his foes.' He was too mag- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 51 

nanimous to have personal foes, and no petty jealousy 
entangled him in a literary squabble. His history is a 
long record of hearty friendships. His old chums, 
Clerk, Erskine, and Skene; his literary acquaintances, 
George Ellis and Morritt; his great rivals, Moore and 
Byron on one side, and Wordsworth, Southey, and Cole- 
ridge on the other; political antagonists such as Jeffrey 
and Cockburn; publishers veho ascribed their misfor- 
tunes, to him, Constable and Ballantyne; the feminine 
authors. Miss Seward, Joanna Baillie, Miss Edgeworth, 
and Miss Austen (whose merits, though she was person- 
ally unknown to him, he was among the first to recog- 
nize) ; and a whole host of obscurer authors, Leyden, 
Hogg, Maturin, Gillies, and others, are all names which 
recall a generous friendliness on Scott's part, which was 
in almost every case returned by good feeling, and in 
very many by the warmest affection. In his own circle 
at Abbotsford and Edinburgh, including his family, his 
servants, and his numerous dependents and associates, 
he was idolized, and was at once a warm and judicious 
friend. 

The same qualities make all appreciative readers 
love him, even when the secret of the charm is not 
observed. No doubt these qualities are compatible with 
the characteristic which, in its unfavourable aspects, is 
called pride. We may be induced to forgive him if, in 
the active discharge of his duties as friend and patron, 
he took a rather low estimate of the functions of preacher 
or artist, and was blind to the equivocal practices into 
which he was first induced as the protector of an old 
friend. The pride, in any case, displayed itself as a 



52 LIFE OF 

noble self-respect and sense of honour when he was 
roused by calamity to a sense of his errors and made 
his last heroic struggle. 

Lockhart gives a list of portraits of Scott, most of 
which were shown at the centenary exhibition of 1871. 
The catalogue then published gives some interesting 
notices and photographic reproductions. A miniature 
taken at Bath about 1775 belonged in 1871 to D. Laing; 
an early copy is at Abbotsford. A miniature of 1797, 
sent to Charlotte Carpenter, is also at Abbotsford. A 
portrait by James Saxon, 1805, is engraved for The 
Lady of the Lake. Raeburn painted a full-length por- 
trait in 1808 for Constable, with Hermitage Castle in 
the distance, and 'Camp.' A replica of 1809, with a 
greyhound added, is at Abbotsford. Raeburn painted 
other portraits, including a head for Lord Montagu 
in 1822, and another, about the same time, for Chantrey. 
William Nicholson (1781-1844) painted a water-colour 
in 1815, and an etching from it in 1817 for a series of 
eminent Scotsmen. He painted three others, one of 
which, and portraits of Scott's daughters, are at Ab- 
botsford. Andrew Geddes made a sketch for his picture 
of the discovery of the regalia in 4 81 8. Another sketch 
was made by Joseph Slater, from which a portrait was 
painted in 1821 for Sir R. H. Inglis. Thomas Phillips 
(1770-1845) painted a head in 1819 for John Murray, 
the publisher. John Watson Gordon painted a por- 
trait, with an Irish terrier, for the Marchioness of 
Abercorn in 1820; and one in 1829, frequently en- 
graved. The original sketch is in the National Portrait 
Gallery, Scotland, and there were many repetitions. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 53 

Gordon also pointed Scott in his study at Castle Street, 
and painted a portrait for Cadell in March, 1830, 
seated with Ins greyhound ' Bran.' Sir Thomas Law- 
rence (see above) painted in 1822 a portrait for George 
IV, finished in 1826, now at Windsor Castle. Wilkie 
in 1822 made a study of Scott for his picture of ' George 
IV at Holyrood ' (now at Windsor), and finished the 
separate portrait for Sir W. Knighton. Gilbert Stuari, 
Newton painted a three-quarter portrait for Mrs. Lock- 
hart in 1824, now at Abbotsford, said by Lockhart to 
be * the best domestic portrait ever done.' Charles 
Robert Leslie painted a half-length for Mr. Ticknor in 
in 1824, now in America. In 1825 Daniel Maclise 
made a sketch of Scott during his Irish tour, which was 
lithographed and largely sold. Another is in the ' Mac- 
lise Portrait Gallery' (ed. Bates). John Prescott 
Knight painted, in 1826, a portrait, 'ill-drawn and 
feeble in expression,' engraved for Lodge's Portraits. 
James Northcote painted, in May, 1828, a portrait for 
Sir William Knighton, in which the artist is introduced. 
Colvin Smith painted a portrait in 1828, of which he 
made as many as twenty copies for various people. John 
Graham-Gilbert painted a portrait in 1829 for the 
Royal Society of Edinburgh. A portrait by the same is 
in the National Portrait Gallery, which has also a por- 
trait of Scott in his study, painted by Sir William Allan 
in 1831, and a sketch by Sir Edwin Landseer. Sir 
Francis Grant painted a portrait in 1831 ; and Sir Edwin 
Landseer, who had known Scott, painted him, after his 
death, in the Rhymer's Glen. R. T. Lauder painted him 
as ' Peter ' Patterson. Wilkie painted a picture of the 



54 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT 

Abbots ford family in 1817, and Thomas Faed a picture 
of Scott and his friends at Abbotsford. 

Chantrey made two busts of Scott, one in 1820, pre- 
sented to Scott, and copied in marble for the Duke of 
Wellington, and one in 1828, bought by Sir Robert 
Peel. The latter is now in the National Portrait Gal- 
lery, London. A replica of the former, executed by Mr. 
John Hutchinson, R. S. A., at the expense of some of 
Scott's admirers, was placed, in May, 1897, in West- 
minster Abbey. There are also busts by Samuel Joseph 
of 1822, and one by Lawrence Macdonald in 1830. A 
statue made by John Greenshields at the end of Scott's 
life is now in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh. 
Two casts of the head, one taken during life and the 
other after death, are at Abbotsford. 

The Scott monument designed by George Kemp, with 
a statue of the novelist by Sir John Steel, was erected 
in Princess Street, Edinburgh, and was inaugurated 17 
August, 1846. 

Sir Leslie Stephen. 




LIFE OF 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 

CHAPTER I 

ANCESTRY^ PARENTAGE^ AND CHILDHOOD 

in WALTER SCOTT was the first 
literary man of a great riding, sport- 
ing, and fighting clan. Indeed, his 
father — a Writer to the Signet, or Edinburgh 
solicitor — was the first of his race to adopt a 
town life and a sedentary profession. Sir 
Walter was the lineal descendant — six gen- 
erations removed — of that Walter Scott com- 
memorated in The Lay of the Last Minstrel, 
who is known in Border history and legend 
as Auld Wat of Harden. Auld Wat*s son 
William, captured by Sir Gideon Murray, of 
Elibank, during a raid of the Scotts on Sir 
Gideon's lands, was, as tradition says, given 
his choice between being hanged on Sir 
Gideon's private gallows, and marrying the 
ugliest of Sir Gideon's three ugly daughters, 

&5 



56 LIFE OF 

Meikle-mouthed Meg, reputed as carrying off 
the prize of ugliness among the women of 
four counties. Sir WilMam was a handsome 
man. He took three days to consider the 
alternative proposed to him, but chose life 
with the large-mouthed lady in the end; and 
found her, according to the tradition which the 
poet, her descendant, has transmitted, an ex- 
cellent wife, with a fine talent for pickling the- 
beef which her husband stole from the herds 
of his foes. Meikle-mouthed Meg trans- 
mitted a distinct trace of her large mouth to 
all her descendants, and not least to him who 
was to use his ' meikle ' mouth to best advan- 
tage as the spokesman of his race. Rather 
more than half-way between Auld Wat of 
Harden's times — i. e., the middle of the six- 
teenth century — and those of Sir Walter 
Scott, poet and novelist, lived Sir Walter's 
great-grandfather, Walter Scott generally 
known in Teviotdale by the surname of 
Beardie, because he would never cut his beard 
after the banishment of the Stuarts, and who 
took arms in their cause and lost by his in- 
trigues on their behalf almost all that he had, 
besides running the greatest risk of being 
hanged as a traitor. This was the ancestor of 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 67 

whom Sir Walter speaks in the introduction to 
the last canto of Marmion: — 

' And thus my Christmas still I hold, 
Where my great grandsire came of old, 
With amber beard and flaxen hair, 
And reverend apostolic air, — 
The feast and holy tide to share. 
And mix sobriety with wine. 
And honest mirth with thoughts divine; 
Small thought was his in after time 
E'er to be hitched into a rhyme. 
The simple sire could only boast 
That he was loyal to his cost; 
The banish'd race of kings revered. 
And lost his land — but kept his beard.' 

Sir Walter inherited from Beardie that 
sentimental Stuart bias which his better judg- 
ment condemned, but which seemed to be 
rather part of his blood than of his mind. And 
most useful to him this sentiment undoubtedly 
was in helping him to restore the mould and 
fashion of the past. Beardie's second son was 
Sir Walter's grandfather, and to him he owed 
not only his first childish experience of the 
delights of country life, but also, — in his own 
estimation at least, — that risky, speculative, 
and sanguine spirit which had so much influ- 
ence over his fortunes. The good man of 



58 LIFE OF 

Sandy-Knowe, wishing to breed sheep, and ba 
ing destitute of capital, borrowed 30Z. from a 
shepherd who was wiUing to invest that sum 
for him in sheep; and the two set off to pur- 
chase a flock near Wooler, in Northumber- 
land; but when the shepherd had found what 
he thought would suit their purpose, he re- 
turned to find his master galloping about a fine 
hunter, on which he had spent the whole capi- 
tal in hand. This speculation, however, pros- 
pered. A few days later Robert Scott dis- 
played the qualities of the hunter to such ad- 
mirable effect with John Scott of Harden's 
hounds, that he sold the horse for double the 
money he had given, and, unlike his grandson, 
abandoned speculative purchases there and 
then. In the latter days of his clouded for- 
tunes, after Ballantyne's and Constable's 
failure, Sir Walter was accustomed to point 
to the picture of his grandfather and say, 
' Blood will out : my building and planting 
was but his buying the hunter before he 
stocked his sheepwalk, over again.* But Sir 
Walter added, says Mr. Lockhart, as he 
glanced at the likeness of his own staid and 
prudent father, ' Yet it was a wonder, too, for 
I have a thread of the attorney in me,' which 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 59 

was doubtless the case; nor was that thread 
the least of his inheritances, for from his 
father certainly Sir Walter derived that dis- 
position towards conscientious, plodding in- 
dustry, legalism of mind, methodical habits of 
work, and a generous, equitable interpretation 
of the scope of all his obligations to others, 
which, prized and cultivated by him as they 
were, turned a great genius, which, especially 
considering the hare-brained element in him, 
might easily have been frittered away or de- 
voted to worthless ends, to such fruitful ac- 
count, and stamped it with so grand an impress 
of personal magnanimity and fortitude. Sir 
Walter's father reminds one in not a few of 
the formal and rather martinetish traits which 
are related of him, of the father of Goethe, 
* a formal man, with strong ideas of strait- 
laced education, passionately orderly (he 
thought a good book nothing without a good 
binding), and never so much excited as by a 
necessary deviation from the " pre-established 
harmony " of household rules.' That descrip- 
tion would apply almost wholly to the sketch 
of old Mr. Scott which the novelist has given 
us under the thin disguise of Alexander Fair- 
ford, Writer to the Signet, in Redgauntlet, 



60 LIFE OF 

a figure confessedly meant, in its chief fea- 
tures, to represent his father. To this Sir 
Walter adds, in one of his later journals, the 
trait that his father was a man of fine presence, 
who conducted ail conventional arrangements 
with a certain grandeur and dignity of air, 
and ' absolutely loved a funeral.' * He 
seemed to preserve the list of a whole bead-roll 
of cousins merely for the pleasure of being at 
their funerals, which he was often asked to 
superintend, and I suspect had sometimes to 
pay for. He carried me with him as often as 
he could to these mortuary ceremonies; but 
feeling I was not, like him, either useful or 
ornamental, I escaped as often as I could.' 
This strong dash of the conventional in Scott's 
father, this satisfaction in seeing people fairly 
to the door of life, and taking his final leave 
of them there, with something of a ceremon- 
ious flourish of observance, was, however, com- 
bined with a much nobler and deeper kind of 
orderliness. Sir Walter used to say that his 
father had lost no small part of a very flourish- 
ing business, by insisting that his clients should 
do their duty to their own people better than 
they were themselves at all inclined to do it. 
And of this generous strictness in sacrificing 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 61 

his own interests to his sympathy for others, 
the son had as much as the father. 

Sir Walter's mother, who was a Miss 
Rutherford, the daughter of a physician, had 
been better educated than most Scotchwomen 
of her day, in spite of having been sent ' to 
be finished off ' by the honourable Mrs. 
Ogilvie,' whose training was so effective, in 
one direction at least, that even in her eightieth 
year Mrs. Scott could not enjoy a comfortable 
rest in her chair, but ' took as much care to 
avoid touching her chair with her back, as if 
she had still been under the stern eyes of Mrs. 
Ogilvie.' None the less Mrs. Scott was a 
motherly, comfortable woman, with much ten- 
derness of heart, and a well-stored, vivid mem- 
ory. Sir Walter, writing of her, after his 
mother's death, to Lady Louisa Stewart, says, 
* She had a mind peculiarly well stored with 
much acquired information and natural talent, 
and as she was very old, and had an excellent 
memory, she could draw, without the least 
exaggeration or affectation, the most striking 
pictures of the past age. If I have been able 
to do anything in the way of painting the past 
times, it is very much from the studies with 
which she presented me. She connected a long 



62 LIFE OF 

period of time with the present generation, for 
she remembered, and had often spoken with, 
a person who perfectly recollected the battle 
of Dunbar and Oliver Cromwell's subsequent 
entry into Edinburgh.' On the day before the 
stroke of paralysis which carried her off, she 
had told Mr. and Mrs. Scott of Harden, * with 
great accuracy, the real story of the Bride of 
Lammermuir, and pointed out wherein it dif- 
fered from the novel. She had all the names 
of the parties, and pointed out ( for she was a 
great genealogist) their connexion with exist- 
ing families.' ^ Sir Walter records many evi- 
dences of the tenderness of his mother's 
nature, and he returned warmly her affection 
for himself. His executors, in lifting up his 
desk, the evening after his burial, found * ar- 
ranged in careful order a series of little 
objects, which had obviously been so placed 
there that his eye might rest on them every 
morning before he began his tasks. These 
were the old-fashioned boxes that had gar- 
nished his mother's toilette, when he, a sickly 
child, slept in her dressing-room, — the silver 

^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, vi. 172-3. The edition re- 
ferred to is throughout the edition of 1839 in ten vol- 
umes. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 63 

taper-stand, which the young advocate had 
bought for her with his first five-guinea fee, 
— a row of small packets inscribed vdth her 
hand, and containing the hair of those of her 
offspring that had died before her, — his 
father's snuff-box, and etui-case, — and more 
things of the like sort.' ^ A story, characteris- 
tic of both Sir Walter's parents, is told by Mr. 
Lockhart which will serve bette^ than anything 
I can remember to bring the father and mother 
of Scott vividly before the imagination. His 
father, like Mr. Alexander Fairford, in Red- 
gauntlet, though himself a strong Hanoverian, 
inherited enough feeling for the Stuarts from 
his grandfather Beardie, and sympathized 
enough with those who were, as he neutrally 
expressed it, ' out in '45,' to ignore as much as 
possible any phrases offensive to the Jacobites. 
For instance, he always called Charles Ed- 
ward not the Pretender but the Chevalier, — 
and he did business for many Jacobites: — 

Mrs. Scott's curiosity was strongly excited one 
autumn by the regular appearance at a certain hour every 
evening of a sedan chair, to deposit a person carefully 
muffled up in a mantle, who was immediately ushered 
into her husband's private room, and commonly remained 

2 Lockhart's Life of Scott, x. 241. 



64 LIFE OF 

with him there until long after the usual bed-time of this 
orderly family. Mr. Scott answered her repeated in- 
quiries with a vagueness that irritated the lady's feelings 
more and more; until at last she could bear the thing no 
longer; but one evening, just as she heard the bell ring 
as for the stranger's chair to carry him off, she made her 
appearance within the forbidden parlour with a salver 
in her hand, observing that she thought the gentlemen 
had sat so long they would be better of a dish of tea^ 
and had ventured accordingly to bring some for their 
acceptance. The stranger, a person of distinguished 
appearance, and richly dressed, bowed to the lady and 
accepted a cup; but her husband knit his brows, and 
refused very coldly to partake the refreshment. A 
moment afterwards the visitor withdrew, and Mr. Scott, 
lifting up the window-sash, took the cup, which he had 
left empty on the table, and tossed it out upon the pave- 
ment. The lady exclaimed for her china, but was put to 
silence by her husband's saying, ' I can forgive your 
little curiosity, madam, but you must pay the penalty. 
I may admit into my house, on a piece of business, per- 
sons wholly unworthy to be treated as guests by my wife. 
Neither lip of me nor of mine comes after Mr. Murray 
of Broughton's.* 

This was the unhappy man who, after attending 
Prince Charles Stuart as his secretary throughout the 
greater part of his expedition, condescended to redeem 
his own life and fortune by bearing evidence against the 
noblest of his master's adherents, when — 

' Pitied by gentle hearts, Kilmarnock died. 
The brave, Balmerino, were on thy side.' ^ 

^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, i. 243-4. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 65 

* Broughton's saucer ' — i. e. the saucer be- 
longing to the cup thus sacrificed by Mr. Scott 
to his indignation against one who had re- 
deemed his own life and fortune by turning 
king's evidence against one of Prince Charles 
Stuart's adherents, — was carefully preserved 
by his son, and hung up in his first study, or 
' den,' under a little print of Prince Charlie. 
This anecdote brings before the mind very 
vividly the character of Sir Walter's parents. 
The eager curiosity of the active-minded 
woman, whom ' the honourable INIrs. Ogilvie ' 
had been able to keep upright in her chair for 
life, but not to cure of the desire to unravel 
the little mysteries of which she had a passing 
glimpse; the grave formality of the husband, 
fretting under his wife's personal attention to 
a dishonoured man, and making her pay the 
penalty by dashing to pieces the cup which the 
king's evidence had used, — again, the visitor 
himself, perfectly conscious no doubt that the 
Hanoverian lawyer held him in utter scorn for 
his faithlessness and cowardice, and reluctant, 
nevertheless, to reject the courtesy of the wife, 
though he could not get anything but cold 
legal advice from the husband: — all these are 
figures which must have acted on the youthful 



66 LIFE OF 

imagination of the poet with singular vivacity, 
and shaped themselves in a hundred changing 
turns of the historical kaleidoscope which was 
always before his mind's eye, as he mused upon 
that past which he was to restore for us with 
almost more than its original freshness of life. 
With such scenes touching even his own home, 
Scott must have been constantly taught to 
balance in his own mind, the more romantic, 
against the more sober and rational considera- 
tions, which had so recently divided house 
against house, even in the same family and 
clan. That the stern Calvinistic lawyer should 
have retained so much of his grandfather 
Beardie's respect for the adherents of the 
exiled house of Stuart, must in itself have 
struck the boy as even more remarkable than 
the passionate loyalty of the Stuarts' pro- 
fessed partisans, and have lent a new sanction 
to the romantic drift of his mother's old tradi- 
tions, and one to which they must have been 
indebted for a great part of their fascination. 
Walter Scott, the ninth of twelve children, 
of whom the first six died in early childhood, 
was born in Edinburgh, on the 15th of 
August, 1771. Of the six later-born children, 
all but one were boys, and the one sister was a 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 67 

somewhat querulous invalid, whom he seems 
to have pitied almost more than he loved. At 
the age of eighteen months the boy had a 
teething- fever, ending in a life-long lameness ; 
and this was the reason why the child was sent 
to reside with his grandfather — the speculative 
grandfather, who had doubled his capital by 
buying a racehorse instead of sheep — at 
Sandy-Knowe, near the ruined tower of 
Smailholm, celebrated afterwards in his ballad 
of Tlie Eve of St. John, in the neighbourhood 
of some fine crags. To these crags the house- 
maid sent from Edinburgh to look after him, 
used to carry him up, with a design (which she 
confessed to the housekeeper) — due, of course, 
to incipient insanity — of murdering the child 
there, and burying him in the moss. Of course 
the maid was dismissed. After this the child 
used to be pent out, when the weather was fine, 
in the safer charge of the shepherd, who would 
often lay him beside the sheep. Long after- 
wards Scott told Mr. Skene, during an ex- 
cursion with Turner, the great painter, who 
was drawing his illustration of Smailholm 
tower for one of Scott's works, that * the habit 
of lying on the turf there among the sheep 
and the lambs had given his mind a peculiar 



68 LIFE OF 

tenderness for these animals, which it had ever 
since retained.' Being forgotten one day 
upon the knolls when a thunderstorm came on, 
his aunt ran out to bring him in, and found 
him shouting, 'Bonny! bonny!' at every 
flash of lightning. One of the old servants at 
Sandy-Knowe spoke of the child long after- 
wards as ' a sweet-tempered bairn, a darling 
with all about the house,' and certainly the 
miniature taken of him in his seventh year 
confirms the impression thus given. It is 
sweet-tempered above everything, and only 
the long upper lip and large mouth, derived 
from his ancestress, Meg Murray, convey the 
promise of the power which was in him. Of 
course the high, almost conical forehead, which 
gained him in his later days from his com- 
rades at the bar the name of ' Old Peveril,' 
in allusion to ' the peak ' which they saw 
towering high above the heads of other men as 
he approached, is not so much marked beneath 
the childish locks of this miniature as it was in 
later life; and the massive, and, in repose, 
certainly heavy face of his maturity, which 
conveyed the impression of the great bulk of 
his character, is still quite invisible under the 
sunny ripple of childish earnestness and 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 69 

gaiety. Scott's hair in childhood was hght 
chestnut, which turned to nut brown in youth. 
His eyebrows were bushy, for we find mention 
made of them as a ' pent-house.' His eyes 
were always light blue. They had in them a 
capacity, on tlie one hand, for enthusiasm, 
sunny brightness, and even hare-brained 
humour, and on the other for expressing de- 
termined resolve and kindly irony, which gave 
great range of expression to the face. There 
are plenty of materials for judging what sort 
of a boy Scott was. In spite of his lameness, 
he early taught himself to clamber about with 
an agility that few children could have sur- 
passed, and to sit his first pony — a little Shet- 
land, not bigger than a large Newfoundland 
dog, which used to come into the house to be 
fed by him — even in gallops on very rough 
ground. He became very early a declaimer. 
Having learned the ballad of Hardy Knute, 
he shouted it forth with such pertinacious en- 
thusiasm that the clergyman of his grand- 
father's parish complained that he ' might as 
well speak in a cannon's mouth as where that 
child was.' At six years of age Mrs. Cock- 
burn described him as the most astounding 
genius of a boy she ever saw. ' He was read- 



70 LIFE OF 

ing a poem to his mother when I went in. I 
made him read on: it was the description of a 
shipwreck. His passion rose with the storm. 
*' There's the mast gone," says he; "crash it 
goes; they will all perish." After his agitation 
he turns to me, " That is too melancholy," says 
he ; "I had better read you something more 
amusing," ' And after the call, he told his aunt 
he liked Mrs. Cockburn, for ' she was a vir- 
tuoso like himself.' * Dear Walter,* says 
Aunt Jenny, * what is a virtuoso? ' ' Don't 
ye know? Why, it's one who wishes and will 
know everything.' This last scene took place 
in his father's house in Edinburgh; but Scott's 
life at Sandy-Knowe, including even the old 
minister, Dr. Duncan, who so bitterly com- 
plained of the boy's ballad-spouting, is painted 
for us, as everybody knows, in the picture of 
his infancy given in the introduction to the 
third canto of Marmion: — 

' It was a barren scene and wild, 
Where naked cliffs were rudely piled: 
But ever and anon between 
Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green ; 
And well the lonely infant knew 
Recesses where the wall-flower grew. 
And honeysuckle loved to crawl 
Up the low crag and ruin'd wall. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 71 

I deem'd such nooks the sweetest shade 

The sun in all its round survey'd; 

And still I thought that shatter'd tower 

The mightiest work of human power; 

And marvell'd as the aged hind 

With some strange tale bewitch'd my mind. 

Of forayers, who, with headlong force, 

Down from that strength had spurr'd their horse. 

Their southern rapine to renew 

Far in the distant Cheviots blue, 

And, home returning, fill'd the hall 

With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl. 

Methought that still with trump and clang 

The gateway's broken arches rang; 

Methought grim features, seam'd with scars. 

Glared through the window's rusty bars; 

And ever, by the winter hearth. 

Old tales I heard of woe or mirth. 

Of lovers' slights, of ladies' charms. 

Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms. 

Of patriot battles, won of old 

By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold ; 

Of later fields of feud and fight. 

When, pouring from their Highland height. 

The Scottish clans, in headlong sway. 

Had swept the scarlet ranks away. 

While, stretch'd at length upon the floor. 

Again I fought each combat o'er. 

Pebbles and shells in order laid. 

The mimic ranks of war display 'd; 

And onward still the Scottish lion bore, 

And still the scatter'd Southron fled before. 



72 LIFE OF 

Still, with vain fondness, could I trace 

Anew each kind familiar face 

That brighten 'd at our evening fire ! 

From the thatch'd mansion's grey-hair'd sire. 

Wise without learning, plain and good, 

And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood; 

Whose eye in age, quick, clear, and keen, 

Show'd what in youth its glance had been ; 

Whose doom discording neighbours sought. 

Content with equity unbought; 

To him the venerable priest, 

Our frequent and familiar guest, 

W^hose life and manners well could paint 

Alike the student and the saint; 

Alas! whose speech too oft I broke 

With gambol rude and timeless joke; 

For I was wayward, bold, and wild, 

A self-will'd imp, a grandame's child; 

But, half a plague and half a jest. 

Was still endured, beloved, caress'd.' 

A picture this of a child of great spirit, 
though with that spirit was combined an active 
and subduing sweetness which could often 
conquer, as by a sudden spell, those whom the 
boy loved. Towards those, however, whom he 
did not love he could be vindictive. His rela- 
tive, the laird of Raeburn, on one occasion 
wrung the neck of a pet starling, which the 
child had partly tamed. ' I flew at his throat 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 73 

like a wild-cat/ he said, in recalling the cir- 
cumstance, fifty years later, in his journal on 
occasion of the old laird's death ; ' and was 
torn from him with no little difficulty.' And, 
judging from this journal, I doubt whether 
he had ever really forgiven the laird of Rae- 
burn. Towards those whom he loved but had 
offended, his manner was very different. ' I 
seldom,' said one of his tutors, Mr. Mitchell, 
' had occasion all the time I was in the family 
to find fault with him, even for trifles, and only 
once to threaten serious castigation, of which 
he was no sooner aware, than he suddenly 
sprang up, threw his arms about my neck and 
kissed me.' And the quaint old gentleman 
adds this commentary : — ' By such generous 
and noble conduct my displeasure was in a 
moment converted into esteem and admira- 
tion; my soul melted into tenderness, and I 
was ready to mingle my tears with his.' This 
spontaneous and fascinating sweetness of his 
childhood was naturally overshadowed to some 
extent in later life by Scott's masculine and 
proud character, but it was always in him. 
And there was much of true character in the 
child behind this sweetness. He had wonder- 
ful self-command, and a peremptory kind of 



74 LIFE OF 

good sense, even in his infancy. While yet a 
child under six years of age, hearing one of 
the servants beginning to tell a ghost-story to 
another, and well knowing that if he listened, 
it would scare away his night's rest, he acted 
for himself with all the promptness of an elder 
person acting for him, and, in spite of the fas- 
cination of the subject, resolutely muffled his 
head in the bed-clothes and refused to hear the 
tale. His sagacity in judging of the charac- 
ter of others was shown, too, even as a school- 
boy; and once it led him to take an advantage 
which caused him many compunctions in after- 
life, whenever he recalled his skilful puerile 
tactics. On one occasion — I tell the story as 
he himself rehearsed it to Samuel Rogers, 
almost at the end of his life, after his attack 
of apoplexy, and just before leaving England 
for Italy in the hopeless quest of health — he 
had long desired to get above a school-fellow 
in his class, who defied all his efforts, till Scott 
noticed that whenever a question was asked of 
his rival, the lad's fingers grasped a particular 
button on his waistcoat, while his mind went 
in search of the answer. Scott accordingly 
anticipated that if he could remove this but- 
ton, the boy would be thrown out, and so it 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 75 

proved. The button was cut off, and the next 
time the lad was questioned, his fingers being 
unable to find the button, and his eyes going 
in perplexed search after his fingers, he stood 
confounded, and Scott mastered by strategy 
the place which he could not gain by mere in- 
dustry. ' Often in after-life,' said Scott, in 
narrating the manoeuvre to Rogers, ' has the 
sight of him smote me as I passed by him ; and 
often have I resolved to make him some repa- 
ration, but it ended in good resolutions. 
Though I never renewed my acquaintance 
with him, I often saw him, for he filled some 
inferior office in one of the courts of law at 
Edinburgh. Poor fellow! I believe he is 
dead; he took early to drinking.'^ 

Scott's school reputation was one of irregu- 
lar ability ; he ' glanced like a meteor from 
one end of the class to the other,' and received 
more praise for his interpretation of the spirit 
of his authors than for his knowledge of their 
language. Out of school his fame stood 
higher. He extemporized innumerable stories 
to which his school-fellows delighted to listen; 
and, in spite of his lameness, he was always in 
the thick of the ' bickers,' or street fights with 

^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, i. 128. 



76 LIFE OF 

the boys of the town, and renowned for his 
boldness in climbing the ' kittle nine stanes ' 
which are ' projected high in air from the pre- 
cipitous black granite of the Castle-rock.' At 
home he was much bullied by his elder brother 
Robert, a lively lad, not without some powers 
of verse-making, who went into the navy, then 
in an unlucky moment passed into the mer- 
chant service of the East India Company, and 
so lost the chance of distinguishing himself in 
the great naval campaigns of Nelson. Per- 
haps Scott would have been all the better for 
a sister a little closer to him than Anne — sickly 
and fanciful — appears ever to have been. The 
masculine side of life appears to predominate 
a little too much in his school and college days, 
and he had such vast energy, vitality, and 
pride, that his life at this time would have 
borne a little taming under the influence of a 
sister thoroughly congenial to him. In rela- 
tion to his studies he was wilful, though not 
perhaps perverse. He steadily declined, for 
instance, to learn Greek, though he mastered 
Latin pretty fairly. After a time spent at the 
High School, Edinburgh, Scott was sent to a 
school at Kelso, where his master made a 
friend and companion of him, and so poured 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 77 

into him a certain amount of Latin scholar- 
ship which he would never otherwise have ob- 
tained. I need hardly add that as a boy Scott 
was, so far as a boy could be, a Tory — a wor- 
shipper of the past, and a great conservative 
of any remnant of the past which reformers 
wished to get rid of. In the autobiographical 
fragment of 1808, he says, in relation to these 
school-days, * I, with my head on fire for 
chivalry, was a Cavalier; my friend was a 
Roundhead; I was a Tory, and he was a 
Whig; I hated Presbyterians, and admired 
Montrose with his victorious Highlanders; he 
liked the Presbyterian Ulysses, the deep and 
politic Argyle; so that we never wanted sub- 
jects of dispute, but our disputes were always 
amicable.' And he adds candidly enough: 
' In all these tenets there was no real convic- 
tion on my part, arising out of acquaintance 
with the views or principles of either party. 
. . . I took up politics at that period, as 
King Charles 11. did his religion, from an 
idea that the Cavalier creed was the more 
gentlemanlike persuasion of the two.' And 
the uniformly amicable character of these con- 
troversies between the young people, itself 
shows how much more they were contro- 



78 LIFE OF 

versies of the imagination than of faith. I 
doubt whether Scott's corivictions on the issues 
of the Past were ever very much more decided 
than they were during his boyhood; though 
undoubtedly he learned to understand much 
more profoundly what was really held by the 
ablest men on both sides of these disputed 
issues. The result, however, was, I think, that 
while he entered better and better into both 
sides as life went on, he never adopted either 
with any earnestness of conviction, being con- 
tent to admit, even to himself, that while his 
feelings leaned in one direction, his reason 
pointed decidedly in the other; and holding 
that it v/as hardly needful to identify himself 
positively with either. As regarded the pres- 
ent, however, feeling always carried the day. 
Scott was a Tory all his life. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 79 




CHAPTER II 

YOUTH CHOICE OF A PROFESSION 

S Scott grew up, entered the classes of 
the college, and began his legal 
studies, first as apprentice to his 
father, and then in the law classes of the Uni- 
versity, he became noticeable to all his friends 
for his gigantic memory, — the rich stores of 
romantic material with which it was loaded, — 
his giant feats of industry for any cherished 
purpose, — his delight in adventure and in all 
athletic enterprises,— his great enjoj^ment of 
youthful ' rows,' so long as they did not 
divide the knot of friends to which he be- 
longed, and his skill in peacemaking amongst 
his own set. During his apprenticeship his 
only means of increasing his slender allowance 
with funds which he could devote to his fav- 
ourite studies, was to earn money by copying, 
and he tells us himself that he remembered 
writing ' 120 folio pages with no interval 
either for food or rest,' fourteen or fifteen 



80 LIFE OF 

hours' very hard work at the very least, — ex- 
pressly for this purpose. 

In the second year of Scott's apprenticeship, 
at about the age of sixteen, he had an attack 
of haemorrhage, no recurrence of Avhich took 
place for some forty years, but which was 
then the beginning of the end. During this 
illness silence was absolutely imposed upon 
him, — two old ladies putting their fingers on 
their lips whenever he offered to speak. It was 
at this time that the lad began his study of the 
scenic side of history, and especially of cam- 
paigns, which he illustrated for himself by the 
arrangement of shells, seeds, and pebbles, so 
as to represent encountering armies, in the 
manner referred to (and referred to ap- 
parently in anticipation of a later stage of his 
life than that he was then speaking of) in the 
passage from the introduction to the third 
canto of Marmion which I have already given. 
He also managed so to arrange the looking- 
glasses in his room as to see the troops march 
out to exercise in the meadows, as he lay in bed. 
His reading was almost all in the direction of 
military exploit, or romance and mediasval 
legend and the later border songs of his own 
country. He learned Italian and read Ariosto. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 81 

Later he learned Spanish and devoured Cer- 
^-antes, whose ' novelas/ he said, ' first in- 
spired him with the ambition to excel in 
fiction ' ; and all that he read and admired he 
remembered. Scott used to illustrate the ca- 
pricious afiinity of his own memory for what 
suited it, and its complete rejection of what 
did not, by old Beattie of Meikledale's answer 
to a Scotch divine, who complimented him on 
the strength of his memory. ' No, sir,' said 
the old Borderer, ' I have no command of my 
memory. It only retains what hits my fancy; 
and probably, sir, if you were to preach to me 
for two hours, I would not be able, when you 
finished, to remember a word you had been 
saying.' Such a memory, when it belongs to 
a man of genius, is really a sieve of the most 
valuable kind. It sifts away what is foreign 
and alien to his genius, and assimilates what 
is suited to it. In his very last days, when he 
was visiting Italy for the first time, Scott de- 
lighted in jMalta, for it recalled to him Vertot's 
Knights of Malta, and much other mediaeval 
story which he had pored over in his youth. 
But when his friends descanted to him at Poz- 
zuoli on the Thermae — commonly called the 
Temple of Serapis — among the ruins of which 



82 LIFE OF 

he stood, he only remarked that he would be- 
lieve whatever he was told, ' for many of his 
friends, and particularly Mr. Morritt, had 
frequently tried to drive classical antiquities, 
as they are called, into his head, but they had 
always found his skull too thick.' Was it not 
perhaps some deep literary instinct, like that 
here indicated, which made him, as a lad, re- 
fuse so steadily to learn Greek, and try to 
prove to his indignant professor that Ariosto 
was superior to Homer? Scott afterwards 
deeply regretted this neglect of Greek; but I 
cannot help thinking that his regret was mis- 
placed. Greek literature would have brought 
before his mind standards of poetry and art 
which could not but have both deeply im- 
pressed and greatly daunted an intellect of so 
much power; I say both impressed and 
daunted, because I believe that Scott himself 
would never have succeeded in studies of a 
classical kind, while he might — like Goethe 
perhaps — have been either misled, by admira- 
tion for that school, into attempting what was 
not adapted to his genius, or else disheartened 
in the work for which his character and ances- 
try really fitted him. It has been said that 
there is a real affinity between Scott and 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 83 

Homer. But the long and refluent music of 
Homer, once naturalized in his mind, would 
have discontented him with that quick, sharp, 
metrical tramp of his own moss-troopers, to 
which alone his genius as a poet was perfectly 
suited. 

It might be supposed that with these ro- 
mantic tastes, Scott could scarcely have made 
much of a lawyer, though the inference would, 
I believe, be quite mistaken. His father, how- 
ever, reproached him with being better fitted 
for a pedlar than a lawyer, — so persistently 
did he trudge over all the neighbouring coun- 
ties in search of the beauties of nature and the 
historic associations of battle, siege, or legend. 
On one occasion when, with their last penny 
spent, Scott and one of his companions had re- 
turned to Edinburgh, living during their last 
day on drinks of milk offered by generous 
peasant-women, and the hips and haws on the 
hedges, he remarked to his father how much 
he had vidshed for George Primrose's power of 
playing on the flute in order to earn a meal by 
the way, old Mr. Scott, catching grumpily at 
the idea, replied, ' I greatly doubt, sir, you 
were born for nae better then a gangrel scrape- 
gut,' — a speech which very probably sug- 



84 LIFE OF 

gested his son's conception of Darsie Lati- 
mer's adventures with the blind fiddler, 
' Wandering Willie,' in Redgauntlet. And, 
it is true that these were the days of mental 
and moral fermentation, what was called in 
Germany the Sturm-und-Drang, the ' f ret- 
and-fury ' period of Scott's life, so far as 
one so mellow and genial in temper ever 
passed through a period of fret and fury at 
all. In other words these were the days of 
rapid motion, of walks of thirty miles a day 
which the lame lad yet found no fatigue to 
him; of mad enterprises, scrapes and drink- 
ing-bouts, in one of which Scott was half per- 
suaded by his friends that he actually sang a 
song for the only time in his life. But even 
in these days of youthful sociability, with 
companions of his own age, Scott was always 
himself, and his imperious will often asserted 
itself. Writing of this time, some thirtj^'-five 
years or so later, he said, ' When I was a boy, 
and on foot expeditions, as we had many, no 
creature could be so indifferent which way our 
course was directed, and I acquiesced in what 
any one proposed; but if I was once driven to 
make a choice, and felt piqued in honour to 
maintain my proposition, I have broken off 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 85 

from the whole party, rather than yield to any 
one.' No doubt, too, in that day of what he 
himself described as ' the silly smart fancies 
that ran in my brain like the bubbles in a glass 
of champagne, as brilliant to my thinking, as 
intoxicating, as evanescent,' solitude was no 
real deprivation to him; and one can easily 
imagine him marching off on his solitary way 
after a dispute with his companions, reciting 
to himself old songs or ballads, with that 
' noticeable but altogether indescribable play 
of the upper lip,' w^hich JNIr. Lockhart thinks 
suggested to one of Scott's most intimate 
friends, on his first acquaintance with him, the 
grotesque notion that he had been *a hautboy- 
player.' This was the first impression formed 
of Scott by William Clerk, one of his earliest 
and life-long friends. It greatly amused 
Scott, who not only had never played on any 
instrument in his life, but could hardly make 
shift to join in the chorus of a popular song 
without marring its effect; but perhaps the 
impression suggested was not so very far 
astray after all. Looking to the poetic side of 
his character, the trumpet certainly would 
have been the instrument that would have 
best symbolized the spirit both of Scott's 



86 LIFE OF 

thought and of his verses. Mr. Lockhart him- 
self, in summing up his impressions of Sir 
Walter, quotes as the most expressive of his 
lines : — 

' Sound, sound the clarion ! fill the fife ! 

To all the sensual world proclaim. 
One crowded hour of glorious life 

Is worth a world without a name.' 

And undoubtedly this gives us the key-note of 
Scott's personal life as well as of his poetic 
power. Above everything he was high- 
spirited, a man of noble, and, at the same time, 
of martial feelings. Sir Francis Doyle speaks 
very justly of Sir Walter as ' among English 
singers the undoubted inheritor of that trum- 
pet-note, which, under the breath of Homer, 
has made the wrath of Achilles immortal ' ; 
and I do not doubt that tliere was something 
in Scott's face, and especially in the expres- 
sion of his mouth, to suggest this even to his 
early college companions. Unfortunately, 
however, even ' one crov/ded hour of glorious 
life ' may sometimes have a ' sensual * in- 
spiration,, and in these days of youthful ad- 
venture, too many such hours seem to have 
owed their inspiration to the Scottish peasant's 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 87 

chief bane, the Highland whisky. In his 
eager search after the old ballads of the Bor- 
der, Scott had many a blithe adventure, which 
ended only too often in a carouse. It was 
soon after this time that he first began those 
raids into Liddesdale, of which all the world 
has enjoyed the records in the sketches — em- 
bodied subsequently in Guy Mannering — of 
Dandie Dinmont, his pony Dumple, and the 
various Peppers and Mustards from whose 
breed there were afterwards introduced into 
Scott's own family, generations of terriers, 
always named, as Sir Walter expressed it, 
after ' the cruet.' I must quote the now 
classic record of those youthful escapades: — 

' Eh me/ said Mr. Shortreed, his companion in all 
these Liddesdale raids, ' sic an endless fund of humour 
and drollery as he had then wi' him. Never ten yards 
but we were either laughing or roaring and singing. 
Wherever we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsel' to 
everybody! He aye did as the lave did; never made 
himsel' the great man or took ony airs in the company. 
I've seen him in a' moods in these jaunts, grave and gay, 
daft and serious, sober and drunk — (this, however, even 
in our wildest rambles, was but rare) — but drunk or 
sober he was aye the gentleman. He looked excessively 
heavy and stupid when he was fou, but he was never out 
o' gude humour.' 



88 LIFE OF 

One of the stories of that time will illustrate 
better the wilder days of Scott's youth than 
any comment: — 

' On reaching one evening,' says Mr. Lockhart, ' some 
Charlieshope or other (I forget the name) among those 
wildernesses, they found a kindly reception as usual; 
but to their agreeable surprise, after some days of hard 
living, a measured and orderly hospitality as respected 
liquor. Soon after supper, at which a bottle of elder- 
berry wine alone had been produced, a young student 
of divinity who happened to be in the house was called 
upon to take the " big ha' Bible," in the good old fashion 
of Burns' Saturday Night: and some progress had been 
already made in the service, when the good man of the 
farm, whose " tendency," as Mr. Mitchell says, " was 
soporific," scandalized his wife and the dominie by start- 
ing suddenly from his knees, and rubbing his eyes, with 

a stentorian exclamation of " By ! here's the keg 

at last ! " and in tumbled, as he spake the word, a couple 
of sturdy herdsmen, whom, on hearing, a day before, of 
the advocate's approaching visit, he had despatched to a 
certain smuggler's haunt at some considerable distance 
in quest of a supply of run brandy from the Solway 
frith. The pious " exercise " of the household was hope- 
lessly interrupted. With a thousand apologies for his 
hitherto shabby entertainment, this jolly Elliot or Arm- 
strong had the welcome keg mounted on the table without 
a moment's delay, and gentle and simple, not forgetting 
the dominie, continued carousing about it imtil daylight 
streamed in ujoon tlie party. Sir Walter Scott seldom 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 89 

failed, when I saw him in company with his Liddesdale 
companions, to mimic with infinite humour the sudden 
outburst of his old host on hearing the clatter of horses' 
feet, which he knew to indicate the arrival of the keg, 
the consternation of the dame, and the rueful despair 
with which the young clergyman closed the book.' ^ 

No wonder old Mr. Scott felt some doubt of 
his son's success at the bar, and thought him 
more fitted in many respects for a ' gangrel 
scrape-gut.' ^ 

In spite of all this love of excitement, Scott 
became a sound lawyer, and might have been 
a great lawyer, had not his pride of character, 
the impatience of his genius, and the stir of 
his imagination rendered him indisposed to 
wait and slave in the precise manner which the 
prepossessions of solicitors appoint. 

For Scott's passion for romantic literature 
was not at all the sort of thing which we 
ordinarily mean by boys' or girls' love of ro- 
mance. No amount of drudgery or labour 
deterred Scott from any undertaking on the 
prosecution of which he was bent. He was 
quite the reverse, indeed, of what is usually 
meant by sentimental, either in his manners 

' Lockhart's Life of Scott, i. 26.9-71. 
2 Lockhart's Life of Scott, i. 206. 



90 LIFE OF 

or his literary interests. As regards the his- 
tory of his own country he was no mean anti- 
quarian. Indeed he cared for the mustiest 
antiquarian researches — of the mediaeval kind 
— so much, that in the depth of his troubles he 
speaks of a talk with a Scotch antiquary and 
herald as one of the things which soothed him 
most. ' I do not know of anything which re- 
lieves the mind so much from the sullens as 
trifling discussions about antiquarian old wom- 
anries. It is like knitting a stocking, divert- 
ing the mind without occupying it.' ^ Thus 
his love of romantic literature was as far as 
possible from that of a mind which only feeds 
on romantic excitements ; rather was it that of 
one who was so moulded by the transmitted 
and acquired love of feudal institutions with 
all their incidents, that he could not take any 
deep interest in any other fashion of human 
society. Now the Scotch law was full of ves- 
tiges and records of that period, — was indeed 
a great standing monument of it ; and in num- 
bers of his writings Scott shows with how 
deep an interest he had studied the Scotch lav*' 
from this point of view. He remarks some- 
where that it was natural for a Scotchman to 

3 Lockhart's Life of Scott, ix. 221. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 91 

feel a strong attachment to the principle of 
rank, if only on the ground that almost any 
Scotchman might, under the Scotch law, turn 
out to be heir-in-tail to some great Scotch title 
or estate by the death of intervening relations. 
And the law which sometimes caused such sud- 
den transformations, had subsequently a true 
interest for him of course as a novel writer, 
to say nothing of his interest in it as an anti- 
quarian and historian who loved to repeople 
the earth, not merely with the picturesque 
groups of the soldiers and courts of the past, 
but with the actors in all the various quaint 
and homely transactions and puzzlements 
which the feudal ages had brought forth. 
Hence though, as a matter of fact, Scott 
never made much figure as an advocate, he be- 
came a very respectable, and might unques- 
tionably have become a very great lawyer. 
When he started at the bar, however, he had 
not acquired the tact to impress an ordinary 
assembly. In one case which he conducted be- 
fore the General Assembly of the Kirk of 
Scotland, when defending a parish minister 
threatened with deposition for drunkenness 
and unseemly behaviour, he certainly missed 
the proper tone, — first receiving a censure for 



92 LIFE OF 

the freedom of his manner in treating the 
allegations against his client, and then so far 
collapsing under the rebuke of the Moderator, 
as to lose the force and urgency necessary to 
produce an effect on his audience. But these 
were merely a boy's mishaps. He was cer- 
tainly by no means a Heaven-born orator, and 
therefore could not expect to spring into ex- 
ceptionally early distinction, and the only true 
reason for his relative failure was that he was 
so full of literary power, and so proudly im- 
patient of the fetters which prudence seemed 
to impose on his extra-professional proceed- 
ings, that he never gained the credit he de- 
served for the general common sense, the 
unwearied industry, and the keen appreciation 
of the ins and outs of legal method, which 
might have raised him to the highest reputa- 
tion even as a judge. 

All readers of his novels know how Scott 
delights in the humours of the law. By way 
of illustration take the following passage, 
which is both short and amusing, in which 
Saunders Fairford — the old solicitor painted 
from Scott's father in Eedgauntlet — descants 
on the law of the stirrup-cup. ' It was de- 
cided in a case before the town bailies of 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 93 

Cupar Angus, when Luckie Simpson's cow 
had drunk up Luckie Jamieson's browst of 
ale, while it stood in the door to cool, that there 
was no damage to pay, because the crummie 
drank without sitting down ; such being the cir- 
cumstance constituting a Doch an Dorroch, 
which is a standing drink for which no reckon- 
ing is paid.' I do not believe that any one of 
Scott's contemporaries had greater legal abili- 
ties than he, though, as it happened, they were 
never fairly tried. But he had both the pride 
and impatience of genius. It fretted him to 
feel that he was dependent on the good opin- 
ions of solicitors, and that they who were in- 
capable of understanding his genius, thought 
the less instead of the better of him as an advo- 
cate, for every indication which he gave of that 
genius. Even on the day of his call to the bar 
he gave expression to a sort of humorous fore- 
taste of this impatience, saying to William 
Clerk, who had been called with him, as he 
mimicked the air and tone of a Highland lass 
waiting at the Cross of Edinburgh to be hired 
for the harvest, ' We've stood here an hour 
by the Tron, hinny, and deil a ane has speered 
our price.' Scott continued to practise at the 
bar — nominally at least — for fourteen years, 



94 LIFE OF 

but the most which he ever seems to have made 
in any one year was short of 230/., and latterly 
his practice was much diminishing instead of 
increasing. His own impatience of solicitors' 
patronage was against him; his well-known 
dabblings in poetry were still more against 
him; and his general repute for wild and un- 
professional adventurousness — which was 
much greater than he deserved — was prob- 
ably most of all against him. Before he 
had been six years at the bar he joined the 
organization of the Edinburgh Volunteer 
Cavalry, took a very active part in the drill, 
and was made their Quartermaster. Then he 
visited London, and became largely known for 
his ballads, and his love of ballads. In his 
eighth year at the bar he accepted a small per- 
manent appointment, with 300/. a year, as 
sheriff of Selkirkshire; and this occurring 
soon after his marriage to a lady -of some 
means, no doubt diminished still further his 
professional zeal. For one third of the time 
during which Scott practised as an advocate 
he made no pretence of taking interest in that 
part of his work, though he was always deeply 
interested in the law itself. In 1806 he under- 
took gratuitously the duties of a Clerk of Ses- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 95 

sion — a permanent officer of the Court at 
Edinburgh — and discharged them without re- 
muneration for five years, from 1806 to 1811, 
in order to secure his ultimate succession to the 
office in the place of an invalid, who for that 
period received all the emoluments and did 
none of the work. Nevertheless Scott's legal 
abilities were so well known, that it was cer- 
tainly at one time intended to offer him a 
Barony of the Exchequer, and it was his own 
doing, apparently, that it was not offered. 
The life of literature and the life of the Bar 
hardly ever suit, and in Scott's case they 
suited the less, that he felt himself likely to 
be a dictator in the one field, and only a postu- 
lant in the other. Literature was a far greater 
gainer by his choice, tiian Law could have 
hcni a loser. For his capacity for the law he 
shared with thousands of able men, his ca- 
pacity for literature with few or none. 



90 LIFE OF 



CHAPTER III 
LOVE AND MARRIAGE 

ONE Sunday, about two years before 
his call to the bar, Scott offered his 
umbrella to a young lady of much 
beauty who was coming out of the Greyfriars 
Church during a shower; the umbrella was 
graciously accepted ; and it was not an unprece- 
dented consequence that Scott fell in love 
with the borrower, who turned out to be Mar- 
garet, daughter of Sir John and Lady Jane 
Stuart Belches, of Invernaj^ , For near six 
years after this, Scott indulged the hope of 
marrying this lady, and it does not seem doubt- 
ful that the lady herself was in part responsi- 
ble for this impression. Scott's father, who 
thought his son's prospects very inferior to 
those of Miss Stuart Belches, felt it his duty to 
warn the baronet of his son's views, a warning 
which the old gentleman appears to have re- 
ceived with that grand unconcern characteris- 
tic of elderly persons in high position, as a 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 97 

hint intrinsically incredible, or at least un- 
worthy of notice. But he took no alarm, and 
Scott's attentions to Williamina Stuart Belches 
continued till close on the eve of her marriage, 
in 1796, to William Forbes (afterwards Sir 
William Forbes) , of Pitsligo, a banker, who 
proved to be one of Sir Waiter's most gen- 
erous and most delicate-minded friends, when 
his time of troubles came towards the end of 
both their lives. Whether Scott was in part 
mistaken as to the impression he had made on 
the young lady, or she was mistaken as to the 
impression he had made on herself, or whether 
other circumstances intervened to cause mis- 
understanding, or the grand indifference of 
Sir John gave way to active intervention when 
the question became a practical one, the world 
Avill now never know, but it does not seem very 
likely that a man of so much force as Scott, 
who certainly had at one time assured himself 
at least of the young lady's strong regard, 
should have been easily displaced even by a 
rival of ability and of most generous and 
amiable character. An entry in the diary 
which Scott kept in 1827, after Constable's 
and Ballantyne's failure, and his wife's death, 
seems to me to suggest that there may have 



98 LIFE OF 

been some misunderstanding between the 
young people, though I am not sure that the 
inference is justified. The passage completes 
the story of this passion — Scott's first and 
only deep passion — so far as it can ever be 
known to us; and as it is a very pathetic and 
characteristic entry, and the attachment to 
which it refers had a great influence on Scott's 
life, both in keeping him free from some of 
the most dangerous temptations of the young, 
during his youth, and in creating within him 
an interior world of dreams and recollections 
throughout his whole life, on which his imagin- 
ative nature Vv^as continually fed — I may as 
well give it. ' He had taken,' says Mr. Lock- 
hart, ' for that winter [1827], the house No. 
6, Shandwick Place, which he occupied by the 
month during the remainder of his servitude 
as a clerk of session. Very near this house, 
he was told a few days after he took posses- 
sion, dwelt the aged mother of his first love; 
and he expressed to his friend Mrs. Skene, a 
wish that she should carry him to renew an 
acquaintance which seems to have been inter- 
rupted from the period of his youthful ro- 
mance. Mrs. Skene complied with his desire, 
and she tells me that a very painful scene 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 99 

ensued.' His diary says, — ' November 7th. 
Began to settle myself this morning after the 
hurry of mind and even of body which I have 
lately undergone. I went to make a visit and 
fairly softened myself, like an old fool, with 
recalling old stories till I was fit for nothing 
but shedding tears and repeating verses for the 
whole night. This is sad work. The very 
grave gives up its dead, and time rolls back 
thirty years to add to my perplexities. I don't 
care. I begin to grow case-hardened, and like 
a stag turning at bay, my naturally good tem- 
per grows fierce and dangerous. Yet what a 
romance to tell — and told I fear it will one 
day be. And then my three years of dreaming 
and my two years of wakening will be chroni- 
cled, doubtless. But the dead will feel no pain. 
— November 10th. At twelve o'clock I went 
again to poor Lady Jane to talk over old 
stories. I am not clear that it is a right or 
healthful indulgence to be ripping up old 
sores, but it seems to give her deep-rooted sor- 
row words, and that is a mental blood-letting. 
To me these things are now matter of calm 
and solemn recollection, never to be forgotten, 
yet scarce to be remembered with pain.' ^ It 
^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, ix. 183-4. 



100 LIFE OF 

was in 1797, after the break-up of his hopes in 
relation to this attachment, that Scott wrote 
the hnes To a Violet, which Mr. F. T. Pal- 
grave, in his thoughtful and striking introduc- 
tion to Scott's poems, rightly characterizes as 
one of the most beautiful of those poems. It 
is, however, far from one characteristic of 
Scott, indeed, so different in style from the 
best of his other poems, that Mr. Browning 
might well have said of Scott, as he once 
affirmed of himself, that for the purpose of 
one particular poem, he ' who blows through 
bronze,' had ' breathed through silver,' — had 
' curbed the liberal hand subservient proudly,' 
— and tamed his spirit to a key elsewhere un- 
known. 

' The violet in her greenwood bower, 

Where birchen boughs with hazels mingle, 
ISIay boast itself the fairest flower 
In glen, or copse, or foi'est dingle. 

* Though fair her gems of azure hue, 

Beneath the dewdrop's weight reclining, 
I've seen an eye of lovelier blue, 

More sweet through watery lustre shining. 

* The summer sun that dew shall dr}'^, 

Ere yet the day be past its morrow; 
Nor longer in my false love's eye 

Remain'd the tear of parting sorrow.' 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 101 

These lines obviously betray a feeling of re- 
sentment, which may or may not have been 
justified; but they are perhaps the most deli- 
cate produced by his pen. The pride which 
was always so notable a feature in Scott, 
probably sustained him through the keen, in- 
ward pain which it is very certain from a great 
many of his own words that he must have suf- 
fered in this uprooting of his most passionate 
hopes. And it was in part probabl}'- the same 
pride which led him to form, within the year, 
a new tie — his engagement to Mademoiselle 
Charpentier, or IMiss Carpenter as she was 
usually called, — the daughter of a French 
royalist of Lyons who had died early in the 
revolution. She had come after her father's 
death to England, chiefly, it seems, because in 
the Marquis of Downshire, who was an old 
friend of the family, her mother knew that 
she would fiod a protector for her children. 
Miss Carpenter was a lively beauty, probably 
of no great depth of character. The few let- 
ters given of hers in Mr. Lockhart's Life of 
Scott, give the impression of an amiable, 
petted girl, of somewhat thin and espiegle 
character, who was rather charmed at the 
depth and intensity of Scott's nature, and at 



102 LIFE OF 

the expectations which he seemed to form of 
what love should mean, than capable of realiz- 
ing them. Evidently she had no inconsider- 
able pleasure in display; but she made on the 
whole a very good wife, only one to be pro- 
tected by him from every care, and not one to 
share Scott's deeper anxieties, or to participate 
in his dreams. Yet INIrs. Scott was not devoid 
of spirit and self-control. For instance, when 
Mr. Jeffrey, having reviewed Marmion in the 
Edinburgh Review in that depreciating and 
omniscient tone which was then considered the 
evidence of critical acumen, dined with Scott on 
the very day on which the review had appeared, 
Mrs. Scott behaved to him through the whole 
evening with the greatest politeness, but fired 
this parting shot in her broken English, as 
he took his leave, — ' Well, good-night, Mr. 
Jeffrey, — dey tell me you have abused Scott 
in de Review, and I hope Mr. Constable has 
paid you very well for writing it.' It is hinted 
that Mrs. Scott was, at the time of Scott's 
greatest fame, far more exhilarated by it than 
her husband with his strong sense and sure 
self-measurement ever was. Mr. Lockhart 
records that Mrs. Grant of Laggan once said 
of them, ' Mr. Scott always seems to me like 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 103 

a glass, through which the rays of admiration 
pass without sensibly affecting it; but the bit 
of paper that lies beside it m ill presently be in 
a blaze, and no wonder.' The bit of paper, 
however, never was in a blaze that I know of ; 
and possibly Mrs. Grant's remark may have 
had a little feminine spite in it. At all events, 
it was not till the rays of misfortune, instead 
of admiration, fell upon Scott's life, that the 
delicate tissue paper shrivelled up ; nor does it 
seem that, even then, it was the trouble, so 
much as a serious malady that had fixed on 
Lady Scott before Sir Walter's troubles be- 
gan, which really scorched up her life. That 
she did not feel with the depth and intensity 
of her husband, or in the same key of feeling, 
is clear. After the failure, and during the 
preparations for abandoning the house in 
Edinburgh, Scott records in his diary: — 'It 
is with a sense of pain that I leave behind a 
parcel of trumpery prints and little ornaments, 
once the pride of Lady Scott's heart, but 
which she saw consigned with indifference to 
the chance of an auction. Things that have 
had their day of importance with me, I cannot 
forget, though the merest trifles; but I am 
glad that she, with bad health, and enough to 



104 LIFE OF 

vex her, has not the same useless mode of as- 
sociating recollections with this unpleasant 
business." ^ 

Poor Lady Scott! It was rather like a bird 
of paradise mating with an eagle. Yet the 
result was happy on the whole; for she had a 
thoroughly kindly nature, and a true heart. 
Within ten days before her death, Scott enters 
in his diary : — ' Still welcoming me with a 
smile, and asserting she is better.' She was 
not the ideal wife for Scott; but she loved 
him, sunned herself in his prosperity, and tried 
to bear his adversity cheerfully. In her last 
illness she would always re]3roach her husband 
and children for their melancholy faces, even 
when that melancholy was, as she well knew, 
due to the approaching shadow of her own 
death. 

2 Lockhart's Life of Scott, viii. 273. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 105 




CHAPTER IV 

EARLIEST POETRY AND BORDER MINSTRELSY 

'COTT'S first serious attempt in poetry 
was a version of Burger's Lenore, a 
spectre-ballad of the violent kind, 
much in favour in Germany at a somewhat 
earlier period, but certainly not a specimen of 
the higher order of imaginative genius. How- 
ever, it stirred Scott's youthful blood, and 
made him ' wish to heaven he could get a skull 
and two cross-bones!' a modest desire, to be 
expressed with so much fervour, and one 
almost immediately gratified. Probably no 
one ever gave a more spirited version of Bur- 
ger's ballad than Scott has given; but the use 
to which Miss Cranstoun, a friend and confi- 
dante of his love for Miss Stuart Belches, 
strove to turn it, by getting it printed, 
blazoned, and richly bound, and presenting it 
to the young lady as a proof of her admirer's 
abilities, was perhaps hardly very sagacious. 
It is quite possible, at least, that Miss Stuart 



106 LIFE OF 

Bekhes may have regarded this vehement ad- 
mirer of spectral wedding journeys and 
skeleton bridals, as unlikely to prepare for her 
that comfortable, trim, and decorous future 
which young ladies usually desire. At any 
rate, the bold stroke failed. The young lady 
admired the verses, but, as we have seen, de- 
clined the translator. Perhaps she regarded 
banking as safer, if less brilliant, work than 
the most effective description of skeleton 
riders. Indeed, Scott at that time — to those 
who did not know what was in him, which no 
one, not even excepting himself, did — had no 
very sure prospects of comfort, to say nothing 
of wealth. It is curious, too, that his first ad- 
venture in literature was thus connected with 
his interest in the preternatural, for no man 
ever lived whose genius was sounder and 
healthier, and less disposed to dwell on the 
half-and-half lights of a dim and eerie world; 
yet ghostly subjects always interested him 
deeply, and he often touched them in his 
stories, more, I think, from the strong artistic 
contrast they afforded to his favourite con- 
ceptions of life, than from any other motive. 
There never was, I fancy, an organization less 
susceptible of this order of fears and super- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 107 

stitions than his own. When a friend jokingly 
urged him, within a few months of his death, 
not to leave Rome on a Fridajs as it was a day 
of bad omen for a journey, he repHed, laugh- 
ing, ' Superstition is very picturesque, and I 
make it, at times, stand me in great stead, but 
I never allow it to interfere with interest or 
convenience.' Basil Hall reports Scott's hav- 
ing told him on the last evening of the j^ear 
1824, when they were talking over this subject, 
that ' having once arrived at a country inn, he 
was told there was no bed for him. " No place 
to lie down at all? " said he. " No," said the 
people of the house; " none, except a room in 
which there is a corpse lying." " Well," said 
he, " did the person die of any contagious dis- 
order? " " Oh, no; not at all," said they. " Well, 
then," continued he, " let me have the other 
bed." " So," said Sir Walter, " I laid me down, 
and never had a better night's sleep in my 
life." ' He was, indeed, a man of iron nerve, 
whose truest artistic enjoyment was in noting 
the forms of character seen in full daylight by 
the light of the most ordinary experience. 
Perhaps for that reason he can on occasion 
relate a preternatural incident, such as the ap- 
pearance of old Alice at the fountain, at the 



108 LIFE OF 

very moment of her death, to the Master of 
Ravenswood, in The Bride of Lammermoor, 
with great effect. It was probably the vivacity 
with which he reahzed the violence which such 
incidents do to the terrestrial common sense 
of our ordinary nature, and at the same time 
tlie sedulous accuracj^ of detail with which he 
narrated them, rather than any, even the 
smallest, special susceptibility of his own brain 
to thrills of the preternatural kind, which gave 
him rather a unique pleasure in dealing with 
such preternatural elements. Sometimes, 
however, his ghosts are a little too muscular 
to produce their due effect as ghosts. In 
translating Biirger's ballad his great success 
lay in the vividness of the spectre's horseman- 
ship. For instance, — 

* Tramp ! tramp ! along the land they rode, 
Splash ! splash ! along the sea ; 
The scourge is red, the spur drops blood, 
The flashing pebbles flee,' 

is far better than any ghostly touch in it; so, 
too, every one will remember how spirited a 
rider is the white Lady of Avenel, in The 
Monastery, and how vigorously she takes 
fords, — as vigorously as the sheriff himself, 



i' 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 109 

who was very fond of fords. On the whole, 
Scott was too sunny and healthy-minded for 
a ghost-seer; and the skull and cross-bones 
with which he ornamented his " den " in his 
father's house, did not succeed in tempting 
him into the world of twilight and cobwebs 
wherein he made his first literary excursion. 
His Williain and Helen, the name he gave to 
his translation of Burger's JLenore, made in 
1795, was effective, after all, more for its 
rapid movement, than for the weirdness of its 
effects. 

If, however, it was the raw preternaturalism 
of such ballads as Biirger's which first led 
Scott to test his own powers, his genius soon 
turned to more appropriate and natural sub- 
jects. Ever since his earliest college days he 
had been collecting, in those excursions of his 
into Liddesdale and elsewhere, materials for a 
book on The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Bor- 
der; and the publication of this work, in 
January, 1802 (in two volumes at first), was 
his first great literary success. The whole edi- 
tion of eight hundred copies was sold within 
the year, while the skill and care which Scott 
had devoted to the historical illustration of 
the ballads, and the force and spirit of his own 



110 LIFE OF 

new ballads, A^Titten in imitation of the old, 
gained him at once a very high literary name. 
And the name was well deserved. The Border 
Minstrelsy was more commensurate in range 
with the genius of Scott, than even the roman- 
tic poems by which it was soon followed, and 
which were received with such universal and 
almost unparalleled delight. For Scott's 
Border Minstrelsy gives more than a glimpse 
of all his many great powers — his historical 
industry and knowledge, his masculine hu- 
mour, his delight in restoring the vision of the 
' old, simple, violent world ' of rugged ac- 
tivity and excitement, as well as that power to 
kindle men's hearts, as by a trumpet-call, 
which was the chief secret of the charm of his 
own greatest poems. It is much easier to dis- 
cern the great novelist of subsequent years in 
the Border Minstrelsy than even in TJie Lay 
of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, and The Lady 
of the Lake taken together. From those ro- 
mantic poems you would never guess that 
Scott entered more eagerly and heartily into 
the common incidents and common cares of 
e very-day human life than into the most 
romantic fortunes; from them you would 
never know how completely he had mastered 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 111 

the leading features of quite different periods 
of our history; from them you would never 
infer that you had before you one of the best 
plodders, as well as one of the most enthusias- 
tic dreamers, in British literature. But all this 
might have been gathered from the various in- 
troductions and notes to the Border Min- 
strelsy, which are full of skilful illustrations, 
of comments teeming with humour, and of 
historic weight. The general introduction 
gives us a general survey of the graphic pic- 
tures of Border quarrels, their simple violence 
and simple cunning. It enters, for instance, 
with grave humour into the strong dis- 
tinction taken in the debatable land be- 
tween a ' freebooter ' and a ' thief,' and the 
difficulty which the inland counties had in 
grasping it, and paints for us, with great vi- 
vacity, the various Border superstitions. An- 
other commentary on a very amusing ballad, 
commemorating the manner in which a blind 
harper stole a horse and got paid for a mare he 
had not lost, gives an account of the curious 
tenure of land, called that of the ' king's 
rentallers,' or ' kindly tenants ; ' and a third 
describes, in language as vivid as the historical 
romance of Kemhmrth, written years after, 



112 LIFE OF 

the manner in which Queen EHzabeth received 
the news of a check to her policy, and vented 
her spleen on the King of Scotland. 

So much as to the breadth of the literary- 
area which this first book of Scott's covered. 
As regards the poetic power which his own 
ballads, in imitation of the old ones, evinced, I 
cannot say that those of the first issue of the 
Border Minstrelsy indicated anything like 
the force which might have been expected from 
one who was so soon to be the author of Mar- 
mion, though many of Scott's warmest ad- 
mirers, including Sir Francis Doyle, seem to 
place Glenfinlas among his finest productions. 
But in the third volume of the Border Min- 
strelsy, which did not appear till 1803, is con- 
tained a ballad on the assassination of the 
Regent Murray, the story being told by his 
assassin, which seems to me a specimen of his 
very highest poetical powers. In Cadyow 
Castle you have not only that rousing trumpet- 
note which you hear in Marmion, but the pomp 
and glitter of a grand martial scene is painted 
with all Scott's peculiar terseness and vigovu'. 
The opening is singularly happy in preparing 
the reader for the description of a violent 
deed. The Earl of Arran, chief of the clan of 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 113 

Hamiltons, is chasing among the old oaks of 
Cadyow Castle, — oaks which belonged to the 
ancient Caledonian forest, — the fierce, wild 
bulls, milk-white, with black muzzles, which 
were not extirpated till shortly before Scott's 
own birth: — 

* Through the huge oaks of Evandale, 

Whose limbs a thousand years have worn, 
What sullen roar comes down the gale. 
And drowns the hunter's pealing horn? 

' Mightiest of all the beasts of chase 
That roam in woody Caledon, 
Crashing the forest in his race. 

The mountain bull comes thundering on. 

* Fierce on the hunter's quiver 'd band 

He rolls his eyes of swarthy glow, 
Spurns, with black hoof and horn, the sand. 
And tosses high his mane of snow. 

* Aim'd well, the chieftain's lance has flown ; 

Struggling in blood the savage lies; 
His roar is sunk in hollow groan, — 

Sound, merry huntsman ! sound the pryse ! ' 

It is while the hunters are resting after this 
feat, that Bothwellhaugh dashes among them 
headlong, spurring his jaded steed with 
poniard instead of spur: — 



114 LIFE OF 

' From gory selle and reeling steed, 

Sprang the fierce horseman with a bound, 
And reeking from the recent deed. 

He dash'd his carbine on the ground.' 

And then Bothwellhaugh tells his tale of 
blood, describing the procession from which 
he had singled out his prey: — 

* " Dark Morton, girt with many a spear, 

Murder's foul minion, led the van ; 
And clash'd their broadswords in the rear 
The wild Macfarlanes' plaided clan. 

' " Glencairn and stout Parkhead were nigh, 
Obsequious at their Regent's rein. 
And haggard Lindsay's iron eye. 
That saw fair Mary weep in vain. 

* " 'Mid pennon'd spears, a steely grove. 

Proud Murray's plumage floated high; 
Scarce could his trampling charger move. 
So close the minions crowded nigh. 

* " From the raised visor's shade, his eye. 

Dark rolling, glanced the ranks along, 
And his steel truncheon, waved on high, 
Seem'd marshalling the iron throng. 

' " But yet his sadden'd brow conf ess'd 
A passing shade of doubt and awe; 
Some fiend was whispering in his breaetj 
'Beware of injured Both~.7ellfe£ugh ! '^ 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 115 

' " The death-shot parts, — the charger springs, — 
Wild rises tumult's startling roar! 
And Murray's plumy helmet rings — 

Rings on the ground to rise no more." * 

This was the ballad which made so strong an 
impression on Thomas Campbell, the poet. 
Referring to some of the lines I have quoted, 
Campbell said, — * I have repeated them so 
often on the North Bridge that the whole fra- 
ternity of coachmen know me by tongue as I 
pass. To be sure, to a mind in sober, serious, 
street-walking humour, it must bear an ap- 
pearance of lunacy when one stamps with the 
hurried pace and fervent shake of the head 
which strong, pithy poetry excites.' ^ I sup- 
pose anecdotes of this kind have been oftener 
told of Scott than of any other English poet. 
Indeed, Sir Walter, who understood himself 
well, gives the explanation in one of his 
diaries : — ' I am sensible,' he says, ' that if 
there be anything good about my poetry or 
prose either, it is a hurried frankness of com- 
position, which pleases soldiers, sailors, and 
young people of bold and active disposi- 
tions.' ^ He might have included old people 

^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, ii. 79- 
' Lockhart's Life of Scott, viii. 370. 



116 LIFE OF 

too. I have heard of two old men — complete 
strangers — passing each other on a dark Lon- 
don night, when one of them happened to be 
repeating to himself, just as Campbell did to 
the hackney coachman of the North Bridge of 
Edinburgh, the last lines of the account of 
Flodden Field in Marmion, ' Charge, Ches- 
ter, charge,' when suddenly a reply came out 
of the darkness, * On, Stanley, on,* where- 
upon they finished the death of Marmion be- 
tween them, took oif their hats to each other, 
and parted, laughing. Scott's is almost the 
only poetry in the English language that not 
only runs thus in the head of average men, but 
heats the head in which it runs by the mere 
force of its hurried frankness of style, to 
use Scott's own terms, or by that of its strong 
and pithy eloquence, as Campbell phrased it. 
And in Cadyow Castle this style is at its cul- 
minating point. 




SIR WALTER SCOTX 117 

CHAPTER V 

scott's maturer poems 

'COTT'S genius flowed late. Cadyow 
Castle^ the first of his poems, I think, 
that has indisputable genius plainly 
stamped on its terse and fiery lines, was com- 
posed in 1802, when he was already thirty-one 
years of age. It was in the same year that he 
wrote the first canto of his first great romance 
in verse, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, a 
poem which did not appear till 1805, when he 
was thirty-four. The first canto (not includ- 
ing the framework, of which the aged harper 
is the principal figure) was written in the 
lodgings to which he was confined for a fort- 
night in 1802, by a kick received from a horse 
on Portobello sands, during a charge of the 
Volunteer Cavalry in which Scott was cornet. 
The poem was originally intended to be in- 
cluded in the Border Minstrelsy, as one of the 
studies in the antique style, but soon outgrew 
the limits of such a study both in length and in 
the freedom of its manner. Both the poorest 



118 LIFE OF 

and the best parts of The Lay were in a special 
manner due to Lady Dalkeith (afterwards 
Duchess of Buccleugh) , who suggested it, and 
in whose honour the poem was written. It was 
she who requested Scott to write a poem on the 
legend of the goblin page, Gilpin Horner, and 
this Scott attempted, — and, so far as the gob- 
lin himself was concerned, conspicuously 
failed. He himself clearly saw that the story 
of this unmanageable imp was both confused 
and uninteresting, and that in fact he had to 
extricate himself from the original ground- 
work of the tale, as from a regular literary 
scrape, in the best way he could. In a letter to 
Miss Seward, Scott says, — ' At length the 
story appeared so uncouth that I was fain to 
put it into the mouth of my old minstrel, lest 
the nature of it should be misunderstood, and 
I should be suspected of setting up a new 
school of poetry, instead of a feeble attempt 
to imitate the old. In the process of the ro- 
mance, the page, intended to be the principal 
person in the work, contrived (from the base- 
ness of his natural propensities, I suppose) to 
slink down stairs into the kitchen, and now he 
must e'en abide there.' ^ And I venture to 
say that no reader of the poem ever has dis- 

^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, ii. 217- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 119 

tinctly understood what the gobhn page did or 
did not do, what it was that was ' lost ' 
throughout the poem and * found ' at the con- 
clusion, what was the object of his personating 
the young heir of the house of Scott, and 
whether or not that object was answered; — 
what use, if any, the magic book of Michael 
Scott was to the Lady of Branksome, or 
whether it was only harm to her ; and I doubt 
moreover whether any one ever cared an iota 
what answer, or whether any answer, might 
be given to any of these questions. All this, 
as Scott himself clearly perceived, was left 
confused, and not simply vague. The goblin 
imp had been more certainly an imp of mis- 
chief to him than even to his boyish ancestor. 
But if Lady Dalkeith suggested the poorest 
part of the poem, she certainly inspired its 
best part. Scott says, as we have seen, that he 
brought in the aged harper to save himself 
from the imputation of ' setting up a new 
school of poetry ' instead of humbly imitating 
an old school. But I think that the chivalrous 
wish to do honour to Lady Dalkeith, both as a 
personal friend and as the wife of his 
' chief,' — as he always called the head of the 
house of Scott, — ^had more to do with the in- 



120 LIFE OF 

troduction of the aged harper, than the wish 
to guard himself against the imputation of 
attempting a new poetic style. He clearly in- 
tended the Duchess of The Lay to represent the 
Countess for whom he wrote it, and the aged 
harper, with his reverence and gratitude and 
self-distrust, was only the disguise in which 
he felt that he could best pour out his loyalty, 
and the romantic devotion with which both 
Lord and Lady Dalkeith, but especially the 
latter, had inspired him. It was certainly this 
beautiful framework which assured the imme- 
diate success and permanent charm of the 
poem ; and the immediate success was for that 
day something marvellous. The magnificent 
quarto edition of 750 copies was soon ex- 
hausted, and an octavo edition of 1500 copies 
was sold out within a year. In the following 
year two editions, containing together 4250 
copies, were disposed of, and before twenty- 
five years had elapsed, that is, before 1830, 
44,000 copies of the poem had been bought by 
the public in this country, taking account of the 
legitimate trade alone. Scott gained in all by 
The Lay 769/., an unprecedented sum in those 
times for an author to obtain from any poem. 
Little more than half a century before, John- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 121 

son received but fifteen guineas for his stately 
poem on The Vanity of Human Wishes, and 
but ten guineas for his London. I do not say 
that Scott's poem had not much more In It of 
true poetic fire, though Scott himself, I be- 
heve, preferred these poems of Johnson's to 
anything that he himself ever wrote. But the 
disproportion in the reward was certainly enor- 
mous, and yet what Scott gained by his Lay 
was of course much less than he gained by any 
of his subsequent poems of equal, or anything 
like equal, length. Thus for Marmion he re- 
ceived 1000 guineas long before the poem was 
published, and for one half of the copyright of 
The Lord of the Isles Constable paid Scott 
1500 guineas. If we ask ourselves to what this 
vast popularity of Scott's poems, and espe- 
cially of the earlier of them ( for, as often hap- 
pens, he was better remunerated for his later 
and much inferior poems than for his earlier 
and more brilliant productions) is due, I think 
the answer must be for the most part, the high 
romantic glow and extraordinary romantic 
simplicity of the poetical elements they con- 
tained. Take the old harper of The Lay, a 
figure which arrested the attention of Pitt 
during even that last most anxious year of his 



122 LIFE OF 

anxious life, the year of Ulm and Austerlitz. 
The lines in which Scott describes the old man's 
embarrassment when first urged to play, pro- 
duced on Pitt, according to his own account, 
' an effect which I might have expected in 
painting, but could never have fancied canable 
of being given in poetry.' ^ 

Every one knows the lines to which Pitt 
refers : — 

' The humble boon was soon obtain'd; 
The aged minstrel audience gain'd. 
But, when he reach'd the room of state, 
Where she with all her ladies sate, 
Perchance he wish'd his boon denied; 
For, when to tune the harp he tried. 
His trembling hand had lost the ease 
Which marks security to please; 
And scenes long past, of joy and pain, 
Came bewildering o'er his aged brain, — 
He tried to tune his harp in vain ! 
The pitying Duchess praised its chime. 
And gave him heart, and gave him time. 
Till every string's according glee 
Was blended into harmony. 
And then, he said, he would full fain 
He could recall an ancient strain 
He never thought to sing again. 
It was not framed for village churls. 
But for high dames and mighty earls; 

- Lockhart's Life of Scott, ii. 226. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 123 

He'd play'd it to King Charles the Good, 

When he kept Court at Holyrood ; 

And much he wish'd, yet fear'd, to try 

The long-forgotten melody. 

Amid the strings his fingers stray'd. 

And an uncertain warbling made. 

And oft he shook his hoary head. 

But when he caught the measure wild 

The old man raised his face, and smiled; 

And lighten'd up his faded eye. 

With all a poet's ecstasy ! 

In varying cadence, soft or strong. 

He swept the sounding chords along; 

The present scene, the future lot. 

His toils, his wants, were all forgot; 

Cold diffidence and age's frost 

In the full tide of song were lost; 

Each blank in faithless memory void 

The poet's glowing thought supplied; 

And, while his harp responsive rung, 

'Twas thus the latest minstrel sung. 

Here paused the harp; and with its swell 
The master's fire and courage fell; 
Dejectedly and low he bow'd. 
And, gazing timid on the crowd. 
He seem'd to seek in every eye 
If they approved his minstrelsy; 
And, diffident of present praise. 
Somewhat he spoke of former days, 
And how old age, and wandering long. 
Had done his hand and harp some wrong.* 



124 LIFE OF 

These lines hardly illustrate, I think, the 
I)artieular form of Mr. Pitt's criticism, for a 
quick succession of fine shades of feeling of 
this kind could never have been delineated in 
a painting, or indeed in a series of paintings, 
at all, while they are so given in the poem. But 
the praise itself, if not its exact form, is amply 
deserved. The singular depth of the romantic 
glow in this passage, and its equally singular 
simplicity, — a simplicity which makes it intel- 
ligible to every one, — are conspicuous to every 
reader. It is not what is called classical poetry, 
for there is no severe outline, — no sculptured 
completeness and repose, — no satisfying 
wholeness of effect to the eye of the mind, — 
no embodiment of a great action. The poet 
gives us a breath, a ripple of alternating fear 
and hope in the heart of an old man, and that 
is all. He catches an emotion that had its roots 
deep in the past, and that is striving onward 
towards something in the future; — he traces 
the wistfulness and self-distrust with which 
age seeks to recover the feelings of youth, — 
the delight with which it greets them when 
they come, — the hesitation and diffidence with 
which it recalls them as they pass away, and 
questions the triumph it has just won,— and 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 125 

he paints all this without subtlety, without com- 
plexity, but with a swiftness such as few poets 
ever surpassed. Generally, however, Scott 
l^refers action itself for his subject, to any feel- 
ing, however active in its bent. The cases in 
which he makes a study of any mood of feel- 
ing, as he does of this harper's feeling, are 
comparatively rare. Deloraine's night-ride to 
JMelrose is a good deal more in Scott's ordinary 
way, than this study of the old harper's wist- 
ful mood. But whatever his subject, his treat- 
ment of it is the same. His lines are always 
strongly drawn ; his handling is always simple ; 
and his subject always romantic. But though 
romantic, it is simple almost to bareness, — one 
of the great causes both of his popularity, and 
of that deficiency in his poetry of which so 
many of his admirers become conscious when 
they compare him with other and richer poets. 
Scott used to say that in poetry Byron ' bet ' 
him; and no doubt that in which chiefly as a 
poet he ' bet ' him, was in the variety, the rich- 
ness, the lustre of his effects. A certain rug- 
gedness and bareness was of the essence of 
Scott's idealism and romance. It was so in 
relation to scenery. He told Washington Irv- 
ing that he loved the very nakedness of the 



126 LIFE OF 

Border country. ' It has something,' he said, 
' bold and stern and solitary about it. When 
I have been for some time in the rich scenery 
about Edinburgh, which is like ornamented 
garden-land, I begin to wish myself back 
again among my honest grey hills, and if I did 
not see the heather at least once a year, I think 
I should die.'' ^ Now, the bareness which 
Scott so loved in his native scenery, there is in 
all his romantic elements of feeling. It is 
while he is bold and stern, that he is at his 
highest ideal point. Directly he begins to at- 
tempt rich or pretty subjects, as in parts of 
The Lady of the Lake, and a good deal of 
The Lord of the Isles, and still more in The 
Bridal of Triermain, his charm disappears. It 
is in painting those moods and exploits, in re- 
lation to which Scott shares most completely 
the feelings of ordinary men, but experiences 
them with far greater strength and purity 
than ordinary men, that he triumphs as a poet. 
Mr. Lockhart tells us that some of Scott's 
senses were decidedly * blunt,' and one seems 
to recognize this in the simplicity of his ro- 
mantic effects. * It is a fact,' he says, ' which 
some philosophers may think worth setting 
down, that Scott's organization, as to more 

^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, v. 248. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 127 

than one of his senses, was the reverse of ex- 
quisite. He had very little of what musicians 
call an ear ; his smell was hardly more delicate. 
I have seen him stare about, quite unconscious 
of the cause, when his whole company betrayed 
their uneasiness at the approach of an overkept 
haunch of venison; and neither by the nose nor 
the palate could he distinguish corked wine 
from sound. He could never tell Madeira 
from sherry, — nay, an Oriental friend having 
sent him a butt of sheer az^ when he remem- 
bered the circumstance some time afterwards 
and called for a bottle to have Sir John Mal- 
colm's opinion of its quality, it turned out that 
his butler, mistaking the label, had already 
served up half of the bin as sherry. Port he 
considered as physic ... in truth he 
liked no wines except sparkling champagne 
and claret; but even as to the last he was no 
connoisseur, and sincerely preferred a tumbler 
of whisky-toddy to the most precious " liquid 
ruby " that ever flowed in the cup of a prince.' ^ 
However, Scott's eye was very keen : — ' It 
was commonly him/ as his little son once said, 
' that saw the hare sitting/ And his percep- 
tion of colour was very delicate as well as his 
mere sight. As Mr. Ruskin has pointed out, 

* Lockhart's Life of Scott, v. 338. 



128 LIFE OF 

his landscape painting is almost all done by 
the lucid use of colour. Nevertheless this 
bluntness of organization in relation to the less 
important senses, no doubt contributed some- 
thing to the singleness and simplicity of the 
deeper and more vital of Scott's romantic im- 
pressions ; at least there is good reason to sup- 
pose that delicate and complicated suscepti- 
bilities do at least diminish the chance of living 
a strong and concentrated life — do risk the 
frittering away of feeling on the mere back- 
waters of sensations, even if they do not di- 
rectly tend towards artificial and indirect 
forms of character. Scott's romance is like 
his native scenery, — bold, bare and rugged, 
with a swift deep stream of strong pure feel- 
ing running through it. There is plenty of 
colour in his pictures, as there is on the Scotch 
hills when the heather is out. And so too there 
is plenty of intensity in his romantic situations ; 
but it is the intensity of simple, natural, un- 
sophisticated, hardy, and manly characters. 
But as for subtleties and fine shades of feeling 
in his poems, or anything like the manifold 
harmonies of the richer arts, they are not to be 
found, or, if such complicated shading is to be 
found — and it is perhaps attempted in some 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 129 

faint measure in The Bridal of Triermain, the 
poem in which Scott tried to pass himself off 
for Erskine, — it is only at the expense of the 
higher qualities of his romantic poetry, that 
even in this small measure it is supplied. 
Again, there is no rich music in his verse. It 
is its rapid onset, its hurrjdng strength, which 
so fixes it in the mind. 

It was not till 1808, three years after the 
publication of The Lay, that Marmion, Scott's 
greatest poem, was published. But I may as 
well say what seems necessary of that and his 
other poems, while I am on the subject of his 
poetry. Marmion has all the advantage over 
The Lay of the Last Minstrel that a coherent 
story told with force and fulness, and con- 
cerned with the same class of subjects as The 
Lay, must have over a confused and ill-man- 
aged legend, the only original purpose of which 
was to serve as the opportunity for a picture 
of Border life and strife. Scott's poems have 
sometimes been depreciated as mere novelettes 
in verse, and I think that some of them may 
be more or less liable to this criticism. For in- 
stance. The Lady of the Lake, with the excep- 
tion of two or three brilliant passages, has 
always seemed to me more of a versified novel- 



130 LIFE OF 

ettCj, — without the higher and broader charac- 
teristics of Scott's prose novels — than of a 
poem. I suppose what one expects from a 
poem as distinguished from a romance — even 
though the poem incorporates a story — is that 
it should not rest for its chief interest on the 
mere development of the story ; but rather that 
the narrative should be quite subordinate to 
that insight into the deeper side of life and 
manners, in expressing which poetry has so 
great an advantage over prose. Of The Lay 
and Marmion this is true; less true of The 
Lady of the Lake, and still less of Rokeby, or 
The Lord of the Isles, and this is why The Lay 
and Marmion seem so much superior as poems 
to the others. They lean less on the interest of 
mere incident, more on that of romantic feel- 
ing and the great social and historic features 
of the day. Marmion was composed in great 
part in the saddle, and the stir of a charge of 
cavalry seems to be at the very core of it. 
' For myself,' said Scott, writing to a lady 
correspondent at a time when he was in active 
service as a volunteer, * I must own that to one 
who has, like myself, la tete tin peu exaltee, the 
pomp and circumstance of war gives, for a 
time, a very poignant and pleasing sensa- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 131 

tion.'^ And you feel this all through 3Iar- 
mion even more than in The Lay. Mr. Dar- 
win would probably say that Auld Wat of 
Harden had about as much responsibility for 
Marmion as Sir Walter himself. ' You will 
expect,' he wrote to the same lady, who was 
personally unknown to him at that time, ' to 
see a person who had dedicated himself to lit- 
erary pursuits, and you will find me a rattle- 
skulled, half -lawyer, half-sportsman, through 
whose head a regiment of horse has been exer- 
cising since he was five years old.' ^ And what 
Scott himself felt in relation to the martial 
elements of his poetry, soldiers in the field felt 
with equal force. ' In the course of the day 
when The Lady of the Lake first reached Sir 
Adam Fergusson, he was posted with his com- 
pany on a point of ground exposed to the 
enemy's artillery, somewhere no doubt on the 
lines of Torres Vedras. The men were ordered 
to lie prostrate on the ground ; while they kept 
that attitude, the captain, kneeling at the head, 
read aloud the description of the battle in 
Canto VI., and the listening soldiers only in- 
terrupted him by a joyous huzza when the 

° Lockhart's Life of Scott, ii. 137. 
^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, ii. 259. 



132 LIFE OF 

French shot struck the bank close above 
them.' ^ It is not often that martial poetry 
has been put to such a test; but we can well 
understand with what rapture a Scotch force 
lying on the ground to shelter from the French 
fire, would enter into such passages as the 
following : — 

' Their light-arm'd archers far and near 

Survey'd the tangled ground. 
Their centre ranks, with pike and spear, 

A twilight forest frown'd. 
Their barbed horsemen, in the rear, 

The stern battalia crown 'd. 
No cymbal clash'd, no clarion rang. 

Still were the pipe and drum; 
Save heavy tread, and armour's clang, 

The sullen march was dumb. 
There breathed no wind their crests to shake. 

Or wave their flags abroad; 
Scarce the frail aspen seem'd to quake. 

That shadow'd o'er their road. 
Their vanward scouts no tidings bring, 

Can rouse no lurking foe, 
Nor spy a trace of living thing 

Save when they stirr'd the roe; 
The host moves like a deep-sea wave, 
Where rise no rocks its power to brave, 

High-swelling, dark, and slow. 

7 Lockhart's Life of Scott, iii. 327. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 133 

The lake is pass'd, and now they gain 
A narrow and a broken plain, 
Before the Trosach's rugged jaws, 
And here the horse and spearmen pause. 
While, to explore the dangerous glen. 
Dive through the pass the archer-men. 

* At once there rose so wild a yell 
Within that dark and narrow dell, 
As all the fiends from heaven that fell 
Had peal'd the banner-cry of Hell! 
Forth from the pass, in tumult driven. 
Like chaff before the wind of heaven. 

The archery appear; 
For life! for life! their plight they ply. 
And shriek, and shout, and battle cry. 
And plaids and bonnets waving high, 
And broadswords flashing to the sky. 
Are maddening in the rear. 
Onward they drive, in dreadful race. 

Pursuers and pursued; 
Before that tide of flight and chase. 
How shall it keep its rooted place. 
The spearmen's twilight wood? 
"Down, down," cried Mar, "your lances down! 

Bear back both friend and foe ! " 
Like reeds before the tempest's frown. 
That serried grove of lances brown 

At once lay levell'd low; 
And, closely shouldering side to side. 
The bristling ranks the onset bide, — 



134 LIFE OF 

" We'll quell the savage mountaineer, 
As their Tinchel cows the game ! 

They came as fleet as forest deer. 
We'll drive them back as tame." ' 

, But admirable in its stern and deep excite- 
ment as that is, the battle of Flodden in Mar- 
mion passes it in vigour, and constitutes per- 
haps the most perfect description of war by 
one who was — almost — both poet and warrior, 
which the English language contains. 

And Marmion registers the high- water mark 
of Scott's poetical power, not only in relation 
to the painting of war, but in relation to the 
painting of nature. Critics from the begin- 
ning onwards have complained of the six intro- 
ductory epistles, as breaking the unity of the 
story. But I cannot see that the remark has 
weight. No poem is written for those who 
read it as they do a novel — merely to follow 
the interest of the story; or if any poem be 
written for such readers, it deserves to die. On 
such a principle — which treats a poem as a 
mere novel and nothing else, — you might ob- 
ject to Homer that he interrupts the battle so 
often to dwell on the origin of the heroes who 
are waging it; or to Byron that he deserts 
Childe Harold to meditate on the rapture of 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 135 

solitude. To my mind the ease and frankness 
of these confessions of the author's recollec- 
tions give a picture of his life and character 
while writing Marmion, which adds greatly to 
its attraction as a poem. You have a picture 
at once not only of the scenery, but of the 
mind in which that scenery is mirrored, and 
are brought back frankly, at fit intervals, from 
the one to the other, in the mode best adapted 
to help you to appreciate the relation of the 
poet to the poem. At least if Milton's various 
interruptions of a much more ambitious theme, 
to muse upon his own qualifications or disqual- 
ifications for the task he had attempted, be not 
artistic mistakes — and I never heard of any 
one who thought them so — I cannot see any 
reason why Scott's periodic recurrence to his 
own personal history should be artistic mis- 
takes either. If Scott's reverie was less lofty 
than Milton's, so also was his story. It seems 
to me as fitting to describe the relation between 
the poet and his theme in the one case as in the 
other. What can be more truly a part of Mar- 
mion, as a poem, though not as a story, than 
that introduction to the first canto in which 
Scott expresses his passionate sympathy with 
the high national feeling of the moment, in 



136 LIFE OF 

his tribute to Pitt and Fox, and then re- 
proaches himself for attempting so great a 
subject and returns to what he calls his ' rude 
legend,' the very essence of which was, how- 
ever, a passionate appeal to the spirit of na- 
tional independence? What can be more ger- 
mane to the poem than the delineation of the 
strength the poet had derived from musing in 
the bare and rugged solitudes of St. Mary's 
Lake, in the introduction to the second canto? 
Or than the striking autobiographical study of 
his own infancy which I have before extracted 
from the introduction to the third? It seems 
to me that Marmion without these introduc- 
tions would be like the hills which border Yar- 
row, without the stream and lake in which they 
are reflected. 

Never at all events in any later poem was 
Scott's touch as a mere painter so terse and 
strong. What a picture of a Scotch winter is 
given in these few lines : — 

* The sheep before the pinching heaven 
To shelter'd dale and down are driven, 
Where yet some faded herbage pines. 
And yet a watery sunbeam shines: 
In meek despondency they eye 
The wither'd sward and wintry sky, 
And from beneath their summer hill 
Stray sadly by Glenkinnon's rilh' 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 137 

Again, if Scott is ever Homeric (which I can- 
not think he often is, in spite of Sir Francis 
Doyle's able criticism, — he is too short, too 
sharp, and too eagerly bent on his rugged way, 
for a poet who is always delighting to find 
loopholes, even in battle, from which to look 
out upon the great story of human nature), 
he is certainly nearest to it in such a passage 
as this : — 

' The Isles-men carried at their backs 
The ancient Danish battle-axe. 
They raised a wild and wondering cry 
As with his guide rode Marmion by. 
Loud were their clamouring tongues, as when 
The clanging sea-fowl leave the fen. 
And, with their cries discordant mix'd, 
Grumbled and yell'd the pipes betwixt.* 

In hardly any of Scott's poetry do we find 
much of what is called the curiosa felicitas of 
expression, — the magic use of words, as dis- 
tinguished from the mere general effect of 
vigour, purity, and concentration of purpose. 
But in Marmion occasionally we do find such 
a use. Take this description, for instance, of 
the Scotch tents near Edinburgh: — 

' A thousand did I say ? I ween 
Thousands on thousands there were seen. 



138 LIFE OF 

That chequer'd all the heath between 

The streamlet and the town; 
In crossing ranks extending far. 
Forming a camp irregular; 
Oft giving way where still there stood 
Some relics of the old oak wood. 
That darkly huge did intervene. 
And tamed the glaring white with green j 
In these extended lines there lay 
A martial kingdom's vast array.' 

The line I have italicized seems to me to have 
more of the poet's special magic of expression 
than is at all usual with Scott. The concep- 
tion of the peaceful green oakwood taming 
the glaring white of the tented field, is as fine 
in idea as it is in relation to the eifect of the 
mere colour on the eye. Judge Scott's poetry 
by whatever test you will — whether it be a test 
of that which is peculiar to it, its glow of na- 
tional feeling, its martial ardour, its swift and 
rugged simplicity, or whether it be a test of 
that which is common to it with most other 
poetry, its attraction for all romantic excite- 
ments, its special feeling for the pomp and 
circumstance of war, its love of light and col- 
our — and tested either way, Marmion will re- 
main his finest poem. The battle of Flodden 
Field touches his highest point in its expres- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 139 

sion of stern patriotic feeling, in its passion- 
ate love of daring, and in the force and swift- 
ness of its movement, no less than in the bril- 
liancy of its romantic interests, the charm of 
its picturesque detail, and the glow of its scenic 
colouring. No poet ever equalled Scott in the 
description of wild and simple scenes and the 
expression of wild and simple feelings. But 
I have said enough now of his poetry, in which, 
good as it is, Scott's genius did not reach its 
highest point. The hurried tramp of his some- 
what monotonous metre is apt to weary the 
ears of men who do not find their sufficient 
happiness, as he did, in dreaming of the wild 
and daring enterprises of his loved Border- 
land. The very quality in his verse which 
makes it seize so powerfully on the imagina- 
tions of plain, bold, adventurous men, often 
makes it hammer f atiguingly against the brain 
of those who need the relief of a wider horizon 
and a richer world. 



140 LIFE OF 

CHAPTER VI 

COMPANIONS AND FRIENDS 

XHAVE anticipated in some degree, in 
speaking of Scott's later poetical 
works, what, in point of time at least, 
should follow some slight sketch of his 
chosen companions, and of his occupations 
in the first period of his married life. 
Scott's most intimate friend for some time 
after he went to college, probably the one 
who most stimulated his imagination in his 
youth, and certainly one of his most intimate 
friends to the very last, was William Clerk, 
who was called to the bar on the same day as 
Scott. He was the son of John Clerk of Eldin, 
the author of a book of some celebrity in its 
time on Naval Tactics. Even in the earliest 
days of this intimacy, the lads who had been 
Scott's fellow-apprentices in hijs father's office, 
saw with some jealousy his growing friendship 
with William Clerk, and remonstrated with 
Scott on the decline of his regard for them, 
but only succeeded in eliciting from him one 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 141 

of those outbursts of peremptory frankness 
which anything that he regarded as an attempt 
to encroach on his own interior hberty of 
choice always provoked. * I will never cut 
any man,' he said, ' unless I detect him in scoun- 
drelism, but I know not what right any of you 
have to interfere with my choice of my com- 
pany. As it is, I fairly own that though I like 
many of you very much, and have long done so, 
I think William Clerk well worth you all put 
together.' * Scott never lost the friendship 
which began with this eager enthusiasm, but 
his chief intimacy with Clerk was during his 
younger days. 

In 1808 Scott describes Clerk as * a man of 
the most acute intellect and powerful appre- 
hension, who, if he should ever shake loose the 
fetters of indolence by which he has been hith- 
erto trammelled, cannot fail to be distin- 
guished in the highest degree.' Whether for 
the reason suggested, or for some other, Clerk 
never actually gained any other distinction so 
great as his friendship wdth Scott conferred 
upon him. Probably Scott had discerned the 
true secret of his friend's comparative obscu- 
rity. Even while preparing for the bar, when 

^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, i. 214. 



142 LIFE OF 

they had agreed to go on alternate mornings 
to each other's lodgings to read together, Scott 
found it necessary to modify the arrangement 
by always visiting his friend, whom he usually 
found in bed. It was William Clerk who sat 
for the picture of Darsie Latimer, the hero of 
Redgauntlet, — whence we should suppose him 
to have been a lively, generous, susceptible, 
contentious, and rather helter-skelter young 
man, much alive to the ludicrous in all situa- 
tions, very eager to see life in all' its phases, 
and somewhat vain of his power of adapting 
himself equally to all these phases. Scott tells 
a story of Clerk's being once baffled — almost 
for the first time — by a stranger in a stage 
coach, who would not, or could not, talk to him 
on any subject, until at last Clerk addressed to 
him this stately remonstrance, ' I have talked 
to you, my friend, on all the ordinary subjects 
— literature, farming, merchandise, gaming, 
game-laws, horse-races, suits-at-law, politics, 
swindling, blasphemy, and philosophy, — is 
there any one subject that you will favour me 
by opening upon? ' ' Sir,' replied the inscru- 
table stranger, * can you say anything clever 
about " bendleather? " ' ^ No doubt this su- 

2 Lockhart's Life of Scott, iii. 344. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 143 

perficial familiarity with a vast number of sub- 
jects was a great fascination to Scott, and a 
great stimulus to his own imagination. To the 
last he held the same opinion of his friend's 
latent powers. ' To my thinking,' he wrote in 
his diary in 1825, ' I never met a man of 
greater powers, of more complete information 
on all desirable subjects.' But in youth at least 
Clerk seems to have had what Sir Walter calls 
a characteristic Edinburgh complaint, the 
' itch for disputation,' and though he softened 
this down in later life, he had always that 
slight contentiousness of bias which enthusi- 
astic men do not often heartily like, and which 
may have prevented Scott from continuing to 
the full the close intimacy of those earlier 
years. Yet almost his last record of a really 
delightful evening, refers to a bachelor's din- 
ner given by Mr. Clerk, who remained un- 
married, as late as 1827, after all Sir Walter's 
worst troubles had come upon him. ' In 
short,' says the diary, ' we really laughed, and 
real laughter is as rare as real tears. I must 
say, too, there was a heart, a kindly feeling 
prevailed over the party. Can London give 
such a dinner? ' ^ It is clear, then, that Clerk's 

^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, ix. 75. 



144 LIFE OF 

charm for his friend survived to the last, and 
that it was not the mere inexperience of boy- 
hood, which made Scott esteem him so highly 
in his early days. 

If Clerk pricked, stimulated, and sometimes 
badgered Scott, another of his friends who be- 
came more and more intimate with him, as life 
went on, and who died before him, always 
soothed him, partly by his gentleness, partly 
by his almost feminine dependence. This was 
William Erskine, also a barrister, and son of 
an Episcopalian clergyman in Perthshire, — to 
whose influence it is probably due that Scott 
himself always read the English Church serv- 
ice in his own country house, and does not ap- 
pear to have retained the Presbyterianism into 
which he was born. Erskine, who was after- 
wards raised to the Bench as Lord Kinnedder 
— a distinction which he did not survive for 
many months — was a good classic, a man of 
fine, or, as some of his companions thought, of 
almost superfine taste. The style apparently 
for which he had credit must have been a some- 
what mimini-pimini style, if we may judge by 
Scott's attempt in The Bridal of Triermain, 
to write in a manner which he intended to be 
attributed to his friend. Erskine was left a 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 145 

widower in middle life, and Scott used to ac- 
cuse him of philandering with pretty women, — 
a mode of love-making which Scott certainly 
contrived to render into verse, in painting Ai*- 
thur's love-making to Lucy in that poem. It 
seems that some absolutely false accusation 
brought against Lord Kinnedder, of an in- 
trigue with a lady with whom he had been thus 
philandering, broke poor Erskine's heart, dur- 
ing his first j^ear as a Judge. ' The Counselor 
(as Scott always called him) was,' says Mr. 
Lockhart, ' a little man of feeble make, who 
seemed unhappy when his pony got beyond a 
footpace, and had never, I should suppose, ad- 
dicted himself to any out-of-door sports what- 
ever. He would, I fancy, as soon have thought 
of slaying his own mutton as of handling a 
fowling-piece ; he used to shudder when he saw 
a party equipped for coursing, as if murder 
was in the wind; but the cool, meditative angler 
was in his ej^es the abomination of abomina- 
tions. His small elegant features, hectic cheek 
and soft hazel eyes, were the index of the quick, 
sensitive, gentle spirit within.' ' He would dis- 
mount to lead his horse down what his friend 
hardly perceived to be a descent at all; grew 
pale at a precipice; and, unlike the white lady 



146 LITE OF 

of Avenel, would go a long way round for a 
bridge.' He shrank from general society, and 
lived in closer intimacies, and his intimacy with 
Scott was of the closest. He was Scott's con- 
fidant in all literary matters, and his advice was 
oftener followed on questions of style and 
form, and of literary enterprise, than that of 
any other of Scott's friends. It is into Ers- 
kine's mouth that Scott puts the supposed ex- 
hortation to himself to choose more classical 
subjects for his poems: — 

* " Approach those masters o'er whose tomb 
Immortal laurels ever bloom; 
Instructive of the feebler bard. 
Still from the grave their voice is heard; 
From them^ and from the paths they show'd. 
Choose honour'd guide and practised road; 
Nor ramble on through brake and maze, 
With harpers rude of barbarous days." ' 

And it is to Erskine that Scott replies, — 

* For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask 
The classic poet's well-conn'd task? 
Nay, Erskine, nay, — on the wild hill 
Let the wild heath-bell flourish still; 
Cherish the tulip, prune the vine. 
But freely let the woodbine twine. 
And leave untrimm'd the eglantine: 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 147 

Nay, my friend, nay, — since oft thy praise 
Hath given fresh vigour to my lays; 
Since oft thy judgment could refine 
My flatten'd thought or cumbrous line, 
Still kind, as is thy wont, attend. 
And in the minstrel spare the friend ! ' 

It was Erskine, too, as Scott expressly states 
in his introduction to the Chronicles of the 
Canongate, who reviewed with far too much 
partiahty the Tales of my Landlord, in the 
Quarterly Review, for January, 1817, — a re- 
view unjustifiably included among Scott's own 
critical essays, on the very insufficient ground 
that the ]MS. reached Murray in Scott's own 
handwriting. There can, however, be no doubt 
at all that Scott copied out his friend's MS., in 
order to increase the mystification which he so 
much enjoyed as to the authorship of his vari- 
ously named series of tales. Possibly enough, 
too, he may have drawn Erskine's attention to 
the evidence which justified his sketch of the 
Puritans in Old Mortality, evidence which he 
certainly intended at one time to embody in a 
reply of his own to the adverse criticism on that 
book. But though Erskine was Scott's alter 
ego for literary purposes, it is certain that Ers- 
kine, with his fastidious, not to say finical, sense 



148 LIFE OF 

of honour, would never have lent his name to 
cover a puff written by Scott of his own works. 
A man who, in Scott's own words, died * a 
victim to a hellishly false story, or rather, I 
should say, to the sensibility of his own nature, 
which could not endure even the shadow of re- 
proach, — like the ermine, which is said to pine 
if its fur is soiled,' was not the man to father a 
puff, even by his dearest friend, on that 
friend's own creations. Erskine was indeed 
almost feminine in his love of Scott ; but he was 
feminine with all the irritable and scrupulous 
delicacy of a man who could not derogate from 
his own ideal of right, even to serve a friend. 

Another friend of Scott's earlier days was 
John Ley den, Scott's most efficient coadjutor 
in the collection of the Border Minstrelsy, — 
that eccentric genius, marvellous linguist, and 
good-natured bear, who, bred a shepherd in 
one of the wildest valleys of Roxburghshire, 
had accumulated before the age of nineteen 
an amount of learning which confounded the 
Edinburgh Professors, and who, without any 
previous knowledge of medicine, prepared him- 
self to pass an examination for the medical 
profession, at six months' notice of the offer of 
an assistant-surgeoncy in the East India Com- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 149 

pany. It was Leyden who once walked between 
forty and fifty miles and back, for the sole 
purpose of visiting an old person who possessed 
a copy of a border ballad that was wanting for 
the Minstrelsy, Scott was sitting at dinner one 
day with company, \\ hen he heard a sound at a 
distance, ' like that of the whistling of a tem- 
pest through the torn rigging of a vessel which 
scuds before it. The sounds increased as they 
approached more near; and Leyden (to the 
gTcat astonishment of such of the guests as did 
not know him) burst into the room chanting 
the desiderated ballad with the most enthusi- 
astic gesture, and all the energy of what he 
used to call the saw-tones of his voice.' ^ Ley- 
den's great antipathy was Ritson, an ill-condi- 
tioned antiquarian, of vegetarian principles, 
whom Scott alone of all the antiquarians of 
that day could manage to tame and tolerate. 
In Scott's absence one day, during his early 
married life at Lasswade, Mrs. Scott inad- 
vertently offered Ritson a slice of beef, when 
that strange man burst out in such outrageous 
tones at what he chose to suppose an insult, that 
Leyden threatened to ' thraw his neck ' if he 
were not silent, a threat which frightened Rit- 

* Lockhart's Life of Scott, ii. 5Q. 



150 LIFE OF 

son out of the cottage. On another occasion, 
simply in order to tease Ritson, Leyden com- 
plained that the meat was overdone, and sent 
to the kitchen for a plate of literally raw beef, 
and ate it up solely for the purpose of shocking 
his crazy rival in antiquarian research. Poor 
Leyden did not long survive his experience of 
the Indian climate. And with him died a pas- 
sion for knowledge of a very high order, com- 
bined with no inconsiderable poetical gifts. It 
was in the study of such eccentric beings as 
Leyden that Scott doubtless acquired his taste 
for painting the humours of Scotch character. 
Another wild shej)herd, and wilder genius 
among Scott's associates, not only in those 
earlier days, but to the end, was that famous 
Ettrick Shepherd, James Hogg, who was 
always quarrelling with his brother poet, as far 
as Scott permitted it, and making it up again 
when his better feelings returned. In a shep- 
lierd's dress, and with hands fresh from sheep- 
shearing, he came to dine for the first time with 
Scott in Castle Street, and finding Mrs. Scott 
lying on the sofa, immediately stretched him- 
self at full length on another sofa; for, as he 
explained afterwards, ' I thought I could not 
do better than to imitate the lady of the house.' 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 151 

At dinner, as the wine passed, he advanced 
from 'Mr. Scott,' to ' Shirra ' (Sheriff), 
' Scott,' * Walter,' and finally ' Wattie,' till at 
supper he convulsed every one by addressing 
Mrs. Scott familiarly as ' Charlotte.' ^ Hogg 
wrote certain short poems, the beauty of which 
in their kind Sir Walter himself never ap- 
proached; but he was a man almost without 
self-restraint or self-knowledge, though he had 
a great deal of self-importance, and hardly 
knew how much he owed to Scott's magnani- 
mous and ever-forbearing kindness, or if he 
did, felt the weight of gratitude a burden on 
his heart. Very different was William Laid- 
law, a farmer on the banks of the Yarrow, 
always Scott's friend, and afterwards his man- 
ager at Abbotsford, through whose hand he 
dictated many of his novels. JSlr. Laidlaw was 
one of Scott's humbler friends, — a class of 
friends with whom he seems always to have 
felt more completely at his ease than any 
others, — who gave at least as much as he re- 
ceived, one of those wise, loyal, and thoughtful 
men in a comparatively modest position of 
life, whom Scott dehghted to trust, and never 
trusted without finding his trust justified. In 
•^Lockhart's Life of Scott, ii. 168-9- 



152 LIFE OF 

addition to these Scotch friends, Scott had 
made, even before the pubhcation of his Bor- 
der Minstrelsy, not a few in London or its 
neighbourhood, — of whom the most important 
at this time was the grey-eyed, hatchet-faced, 
courteous George EUis, as Leyden described 
him, the author of various works on ancient 
Enghsh poetry and romance, who combined 
with a shrewd, satirical vein, and a great knowl- 
edge of the world, political as well as literary, 
an exquisite taste in poetry, and a warm heart. 
Certainly Ellis's criticism on his poems was the 
truest and best that Scott ever received; and 
had he lived to read his novels, — only one of 
which was published before Ellis's death, — he 
might have given Scott more useful help than 
either Ballantyne or even Erskine. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 153 




CHAPTER VII 

FIRST COUNTRY HOMES 

'O completely was Scott by nature an 
out-of-doors man that he cannot be 
adequately known either through his 
poems or through his friends, without also 
knowing his external surroundings and occu- 
pations. His first country home was the cot- 
tage at Lasswade, on the Esk, about six miles 
from Edinburgh, which he took in 1798, a few 
months after his marriage, and retained till 
1804. It was a pretty little cottage, in the 
beautification of which Scott felt great pride, 
and where he exercised himself in the small 
beginnings of those tastes for altering and 
planting which grew so rapidly upon him, and 
at last enticed him into castle-building and 
tree-culture on a dangerous, not to say, ruinous 
scale. One of Scott's intimate friends, the 
master of Rokeby, by whose house and neigh- 
bourhood the poem of that name was sug- 
gested, Mr. Morritt, walked along the Esk in 



154 LIFE OF 

1808 with Scott four years after he had left it, 
and was taken out of his way to see it. ' I have 
been bringing you,' he said, ' where there is 
Uttle enough to be seen, only that Scotch cot- 
tage, but though not worth looking at, I could 
not pass it. It was our first country house 
when newly married, and many a contrivance 
it had to make it comfortable. I made a dining- 
table for it with my own hands. Look at these 
two miserable willow-trees on either side the 
gate into the enclosure; they are tied together 
at the top to be an arch, and a cross made of two 
sticks over them is not yet decayed. To be 
sure it is not much of a lion to show a stranger ; 
but I wanted to see it again myself, for I 
assure you that after I had constructed it, 
mamma (Mrs. Scott) and I both of us thought 
it so fine, we turned out to see it by moonlight, 
and walked backwards from it to the cottage- 
door, in admiration of our own magnificence 
and its picturesque effect.' It was here at 
Lasswade that he bought the phaeton, which 
was the first wheeled carriage that ever pene- 
trated to Liddesdale, a feat which it accom- 
plished in the first August of this century, i 

When Scott left the cottage at Lasswade 
in 1804, it was to take up his country residence 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 155 

in Selkirkshire, of which he had now been made 
sheriff, in a beautiful little house belonging to 
his cousin, Major-General Sir James Russell, 
and known to all the readers of Scott's poetry 
as the Ashestiel of the Marmion introductions. 
The Glenkinnon brook dashes in a deep ravine 
through the grounds to join the Tweed; behind 
the house rise the hills which divide the Tweed 
from the Yarrow ; and an easy ride took Scott 
into the scenery of the Yarrow. The descrip- 
tion of Ashestiel, and the brook which runs 
through it, in the introduction to the first canto 
of Marmion, is indeed one of the finest speci- 
mens of Scott's descriptive poetry: — 

' November's sky is chill and drear, 
November's leaf is red and sear; 
Late, gazing down the steepy linn- 
That hems our little garden in, 
Low in its dark and narrow glen. 
You scarce the rivulet might ken. 
So thick the tangled greenwood grew. 
So feeble trill'd the streamlet through; 
Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen. 
Through bush and briar no longer green. 
An angry brook, it sweeps the glade. 
Brawls over rock and wild cascade. 
And, foaming brown with doubled speed. 
Hurries its waters to the Tweed.' 



156 LIFE OF 

Selkirk was his nearest town, and that was 
seven miles from Ashestiel ; and even his near- 
est neighbour was at Yair, a few miles off 
lower down the Tweed, — Yair of which he 
wrote in another of his introductions to Mar- 
mion: — 

' From Yair, which hills so closely bind 
Scarce can the Tweed his passage find, 
Though much he fret, and chafe, and toil. 
Till all his eddying currents boil.' 

At Ashestiel it was one of his greatest de- 
lights to look after his relative's woods, and to 
dream of planting and thinning woods of his 
own, a dream only too amply realized. It was 
here that a new kitchen-range was sunk for 
some time in the ford, which was so swollen by 
a storm in 1805 that the horse and cart that 
brought it were themselves with difficulty res- 
cued from the waters. And it was here that 
Scott first entered on that active life of literary 
labour in close conjunction with an equally 
active life of rural sport, which gained him a 
well- justified reputation as the hardest worker 
and the heartiest player in the kingdom. At 
Lasswade Scott's work had been done at night; 
but serious headaches made him change his 



SIR WALTER SCOTT isr 

habit at Ashestiel, and rise steadily at five, 
lighting his own fire in winter. ' Arrayed in 
his shooting- jacket, or whatever dress he meant 
to use till dinner-time, he was seated at his desk 
by six o'clock, all his papers arranged before 
him in the most accurate order, and his books 
of reference marshalled around him on the 
floor, while at least one favourite dog lay 
watching his eye, just beyond the hne of cir- 
cumvallation. Thus, by the time the family 
assembled for breakfast, between nine and ten, 
he had done enough, in his own language, " to 
break the neck of the day's work." After 
breakfast a couple of hours more were given 
to his solitary tasks, and b}^ noon he was, as he 
used to say, his " own man." When the weather 
was bad, he would labour incessantly all the 
morning; but the general rule was to be out 
and on horseback by one o'clock at the latest; 
while, if any more distant excursion had been 
proposed overnight, he was ready to start on 
it by ten ; his occasional rainy days of uninter- 
mitted study, forming, as he said, a fund in 
his favour, out of which he was entitled to draw 
for accommodation whenever the sun shone 
with special brightness.' In his earlier days 
none of his horses liked to be fed except by 



158 LIFE OF 

their master. When Brown Adam was sad- 
dled, and the stable-door opened, the horse 
would trot round to the leaping-on stone of his 
own accord, to be mounted, and was quite in- 
tractable under any one but Scott. Scott's life 
might well be fairly divided — just as history 
is divided into reigns — by the succession of his 
horses and dogs. The reigns of Captain, Lieu- 
tenant, Brown Adam, Daisy, divide at least the 
period up to Waterloo; while the reigns of 
Sybil Grey, and the Covenanter, or Douce 
Davie, divide the period of Scott's declining 
years. During the brilliant period of the 
earlier novels we hear less of Scott's horses; 
but of his deerhounds there is an unbroken 
succession. Camp, Maida (the ' Bevis ' of 
Woodstock), and Nimrod, reigned succes- 
sively between Sir Walter's marriage and his 
death. It was Camp on whose death he relin- 
quished a dinner invitation previously ac- 
cepted, on the ground that the death of ' an 
old friend ' rendered him unwilling to dine 
out ; Maida, to whom he erected a marble monu- 
ment, and Nimrod, of whom he spoke so 
affectingly as too good a dog for his dimin- 
ished fortunes during his absence in Italy on 
the last hopeless journey. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 159 

Scott's amusements at Ashestiel, besides 
riding, in which he was fearless to rashness, 
and coursing, which was the chief form of 
sporting in the neighbourhood, comprehended 
* burning the water,' as salmon-spearing by 
torchlight was called, in the course of which he 
got many a ducking. Mr. Skene gives an 
amusing picture of their excursions together 
from Ashestiel among the hills, he himself fol- 
lowed by a lanky Savoyard, and Scott by a 
portly Scotch butler — both servants alike 
highly sensitive as to their personal dignity — 
on horses which neither of the attendants could 
sit well. * Scott's heavy lumbering buff etier 
had provided himself against the mountain 
storms with a huge cloak, which, when the 
cavalcade was at gallop, streamed at full 
stretch from his shoulders, and kept flapping 
in the other's face, who, having more than 
enough to do in preserving his own equilib- 
rium, could not think of attempting at any 
time to control the pace of his steed, and had 
no relief but fuming and pesting at the sacre 
manteau, in language happily unintelligible 
to its wearer. Now and then some ditch or 
turf- fence rendered it indispensable to adven- 
ture on a leap, and no farce could have been 



160 LIFE OF 

more amusing than the display of pohteness 
which then occurred between these worthy 
equestrians, each courteously declining in 
favour of his friend the honour of the first 
experiment, the horses fretting impatient be- 
neath them, and the dogs clamouring en- 
couragement.' ^ Such was Scott's order of life 
at Ashestiel, where he remained from 1804 to 
1812. As to his literary work here, it was 
enormous. Besides finishing The Lay of the 
Last Minstrel, writing Marmion, The Lady of 
the Lake, part of The Bridal of Triermain, 
and part of Rokeby, and writing reviews, he 
wrote a Life of Dryden, and edited his works 
anew with some care, in eighteen volumes, 
edited Somers Collection of Tracts, in thirteen 
volumes, quarto, Sir Ralph Sadler's Life, Let- 
ters and State Paper s,\r\ three volumes, quarto, 
Miss Seward's Life and Poetical Works, The 
Secret History of the Court of James I., in 
two volumes, Strutfs Queenhoo Hall, in four 
volumes, 12mo, and various other single vol- 
umes, and began his heavy work on the edition 
of Swift. This was the literary work of 
eight years, during which he had the duties of 
his Sherifi'ship, and, after he gave up his 
^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, ii. 268-9- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 161 

practice as a barrister, the duties of his Deputy 
Clerkship of Session to discharge regularly. 
The editing of Dryden alone would have 
seemed to most men of leisure a pretty full 
occupation for these eight years, and though 
I do not know that Scott edited with the 
anxious care with which that sort of work is 
often now prepared, that he went into all the 
arguments for a doubtful reading with the 
pains that Mr. Dyce spent on the various 
readings of Shakespeare, or that Mr. Spedding 
spent on a various reading of Bacon, yet Scott 
did his work in a steady, workmanlike manner, 
which satisfied the most fastidious critics of 
that day, and he was never, I believe, charged 
with hurrying or scamping it. His biographies 
of Swift and Dryden are plain solid pieces of 
work — not exactly the works of art which 
biographies have been made in our daj^ — not 
comparable to Carlyle's studies of Cromwell 
or Frederick, or, in point of art, even to the 
life of John Sterling, but still sensible and in- 
teresting, sound in judgment, and animated in 
style. 



162 LIFE OF 



CHAPTER VIII 

REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD^ AND LIFE THERE 

XX May, 1812, Scott having now at last 
obtained the salary of the Clerkship 
of Session, the work of which he had 
for more than five years discharged without 
pay, indulged himself in realizing his favourite 
dream of buying a ' mountain farm ' at Ab- 
botsford, — five miles lower down the Tweed 
than his cottage at Ashestiel, which was now 
again claimed by the family of Russell, — and 
migrated thither with his household gods. 
The children long remembered the leave-taking 
as one of pure grief, for the villagers were 
much attached both to Scott and to his wife, 
who had made herself greatly beloved by her 
imtiring goodness to the sick among her poor 
neighbours. But Scott himself describes the 
migration as a scene in which their neighbours 
found no small share of amusement. ' Our 
flitting and removal from Ashestiel baffled all 
description; we had twenty-five cartloads of 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 163 

the veriest trash in nature, besides dogs, pigs, 
ponies, pollltr3^ cows, calves, bai'e-headed 
wenches, and bare-breeched boys.' ^ 

To another friend Scott wrote that the 
neighbours had ' been much dehghted with the 
procession of my furniture, in which old 
swords, bows, targets, and lances made a verj'' 
conspicuous show. A family of turkeys was 
accommodated within the helmet of some preihv 
chevalier of ancient border fame ; and the very 
cows, for aught I know, were bearing banners 
and muskets. I assure your ladyship that this 
caravan, attended by a dozen of ragged rosy 
peasant children, carrying fishing-rods and 
spears, and leading ponies, greyhounds, and 
spaniels, would, as it crossed the Tweed, have 
furnished no bad subject for the pencil, and 
really reminded me of one of the gipsy groups 
of Callot upon their march.' ~ 

The place thus bought for 4000/.,— half of 
which, according to Scott's bad and sanguine 
habit, was borrowed from his brother, and half 
raised on the security of a poem at the moment 
of sale wholly unwritten, and not completed 
even when he removed to Abbotsford — ■ 

^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, iv. 6. 
2 Lockhart's Life of Scott, iv. 3. 



164 LIFE OF 

' Rokeby ' — became only too much of an idol 
for the rest of Scott's life. Mr. Lockhart 
admits that before the crash came he had in- 
vested 29,000/. in the purchase of land alone. 
But at this time only the kernel of the subse- 
quent estate was bought, in the shape of a 
hundred acres or rather more, part of which 
ran along the shores of the Tweed — ' a beauti- 
ful river flowing broad and bright over a bed 
of milk-white pebbles, unless here and there 
where it darkened into a deep pool, overhung 
as yet only by birches and alders.' There was 
also a poor farm-house, a staring barn, and a 
pond so dirty that it had hitherto given the 
name of ' Clarty Hole ' to the place itself. 
Scott renamed the place from the adjoining 
ford which was just above the confluence of 
the Gala with the Tweed. He chose the name 
of Abbotsford because the land had formerly 
all belonged to the Abbots of Melrose, — the 
ruin of whose beautiful abbey was visible from 
many parts of the little property. On the 
other side of the river the old British barrier 
called ' the Catrail ' was full in view. As yet 
the place was not planted, — the only effort 
made in this direction by its former owner, Dr. 
Douglas, having been a long narrow strip of 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 165 

firs, which Scott used to compare to a blaclc 
hair-comb, and which gave the name of ' The 
Doctor's Redding-Kame ' to the stretch of 
woods of which it is still the central line. Such 
was the place which he made it the too great 
delight of the remainder of his life to increase 
and beautify, by spending on it a good deal 
more than he had earned, and that too in times 
when he should have earned a good deal more 
than he ought to have thought, even for a 
moment of spending. The cottage grew to a 
mansion, and the mansion to a castle. The 
farm by the Tweed made him long for a farm 
by the Cauldshiel's loch and the farm by the 
Cauldshiel's loch for Thomas the Rhymer's 
Glen; and as, at every step in the ladder, his 
means of buying were really increasing — 
though they were so cruelly discounted and 
forestalled by this growing land-hunger, — 
Scott never realized into what troubles he was 
carefully running himself. 

Of his life at Abbotsford at a later period 
when his building was greatly enlarged, and 
his children grown up, we have a brilliant pic- 
ture from the pen of Mr. Lockhart. And 
though it does not belong to his first years at 
Abbotsford, I cannot do better than include 



166 LIFE OF 

it here as conveying probably better than any- 
thing I could elsewhere find, the charm of that 
ideal life which lured Scott on from one project 
to another in that scheme of castle-building, 
in relation to which he confused so dangerously 
the world of dreams with the harder world of 
wages, capital, interest, and rent. 

I remember saying to William Allan one morning, as 
the whole party mustered before the porch after break- 
fast, ' A faithful sketch of what you at this moment see 
would be more interesting a hundred years hence than 
the grandest so-called historical picture that you will ever 
exhibit in Somerset House ' ; and my friend agreed with 
me so cordially that I often wondered afterwards he 
had not attempted to realize the suggestion. The sub- 
ject ought, however, to have been treated conjointly by 
him (or Wilkie) and Edwin Landseer. 

It was a clear, bright September morning, with a 
sharpness in the air that doubled the animating influence 
of the sunshine, and all was in readiness for a grand 
coursing match on Newark Hill. The only guest who 
had chalked out other sport for himself was the staunch- 
est of anglers, Mr. Rose; but he too was there on his 
shelty, armed with his salmon-rod and landing-net, and 
attended by his humourous squire, Hinves, and Charlie 
Purdie, a brother of Tom, in those days the most cele- 
brated fisherman of the district. This little group of 
Waltonians, bound for Lord Somerville's preserve, re- 
mained lounging about to witness the start of the main 
cavalcade. Sir Walter, mounted on SybO, was marshal- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 167 

ling the order of procession with a huge hunting-whip; 
and among a dozen frolicsome youths and maidens, who 
seemed disposed to laugh at all discipline, appeared, each 
on horseback, each as eager as the youngest sportsman 
in the troop. Sir Humphry Davy, Dr. Wollaston, and the 
patriarch of Scottish belles lettres, Henry Mackenzie. 
The Man of Feeling, however, was persuaded with some 
difficulty to resign his steed for the present to his faith- 
ful negro follower, and to join Lady Scott in the socia- 
ble, until we should reach the ground of our battue. 
Laidlaw, on a long-tailed, wiry Highlander, yclept 
Hoddin Grey, which carried him nimbly and stoutly, al- 
though his feet almost touched the ground as he sat, was 
the adjutant. But the most picturesque figure was the 
illustrious inventor of the safety-lamp. He had come for 
his favourite sport of angling, and had been practising 
it successfully with Rose, his travelling-companion, for 
two or three days preceding this, but he had not pre- 
pared for coursing fields, and had left Charlie Purdie's 
troop for Sir Walter's on a sudden thought; and his 
fisherman's costume — a brown hat with flexible brim, 
surrounded with line upon line, and innumerable fly- 
hooks, jack-boots worthy of a Dutch smuggler, and a 
fustian surtout dabbled with the blood of salmon, — ^made 
a fine contrast with the smart jackets, white cord 
breeches, and well-polished jockey-boots of the less dis- 
tinguished cavaliers about him. Dr. Wollaston was in 
black, and, with his noble, serene dignity of countenance, 
might have passed for a sporting archbishop. Mr. 
Mackenzie, at this time in the seventy-sixth year of his 
age, with a white hat turned up with green, green 



168 LIFE OF 

spectacles^ green jacket^ and long brown leather gaiters 
buttoned upon his nether anatomy, wore a dog-whistle 
round his neck^ and had all over the air of as resolute a 
devotee as the gay captain of Huntly Burn. Tom 
Purdie and his subalterns had preceded us by a few 
hours with all the greyhounds that could be collected 
at Abbotsford, Darnick, and Melrose; but the giant 
Maida had remained as his master's orderly, and now 
gambolled about Sibyl Grey, barking for mere joy, like 
a spaniel puppy. 

The order of march had been all settled, and the 
sociable was just getting under weigh, when the Lady 
Anne broke from the line, screaming with laughter, and 
exclaimed, " Papa! papa! I know you could never think 
of going without your pet." Scott looked round, and I 
rather think there was a blush as well as a smile upon 
his face, when he perceived a little black pig frisking 
about his pony, and evidently a self-elected addition to 
the party of the day. He tried to look stern, and 
cracked his whip at the creature, but was in a moment 
obliged to join in the general cheers. Poor piggy soon 
found a strap round his neck, and was dragged into the 
background. Scott watching the retreat, repeated with 
mock pathos the first verse of an old pastoral song: — 

* What will I do gin my hoggie die ? 
My joy, my pride, my hoggie! 
My only beast, I had nae mae. 
And wow ! but I was vogie ! ' 

The cheers were redoubled, and the squadron moved on. 
This pig had taken, nobody could tell how, a most sen- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 169 

timental attachment to Scott, and was constantly urging 
his pretension to be admitted a regular member of his 
tail, along with the greyhounds and terriers; but indeed 
I remember him suffering another summer under the 
same sort of pertinacity on the part of an affectionate 
hen. I leave the explanation for philosophers; but such 
were the facts. I have too much respect for the vul- 
garly calumniated donkey to name him in the same 
category of pets with the pig and the hen; but a year 
or two after this time, my wife used to drive a couple of 
these animals in a little garden chair, and whenever her 
father appeared at the door of our cottage, we were 
sure to see Hannah More and Lady Morgan (as Anne 
Scott had wickedly christened them) trotting from their 
pasture to lay their noses over the paling, and, as Wash- 
ington Irving says of the old white-haired hedger with 
the Parisian snuff-box, * to have a pleasant crack wi' the 
laird.' ^ 

Carlyle, in his criticism on Scott — a criticism 
which will hardly, I think, stand the test of 
criticism in its turn, so greatly does he overdo 
the reaction against the first excessive appre- 
ciation of his genius — adds a contribution of 
his own to this charming idyll, in reference to 
the natural fascination which Scott seemed to 
exert over almost all dumb creatures. A little 
Blenheim cocker, ' one of the smallest, beauti- 
fullest, and tiniest of lapdogs,' with which 

3 Lockhart's Life of Scott, vi. 238-242. 



170 LIFE OF 

Carlyle was well acquainted, and which was 
also one of the shyest of dogs, that would 
crouch towards his mistress and draw back 
' with angry timidity ' if any one did but look 
at him admiringly, once met in the street ' a 
tall, singular, busy-looking man,' who halted 
by. The dog ran towards him and began 
' fawning, frisking, licking at his feet ; ' and 
every time he saw Sir Walter afterwards, in 
Edinburgh, he repeated his demonstration of 
delight. Thus discriminating was this fastid- 
ious Blenheim cocker even in the busy streets 
of Edinburgh. 

And Scott's attraction for dumb animals 
was only a lesser form of his attraction for all 
who were in any way dependent on him, es- 
pecially his own servants and labourers. The 
story of his demeanour towards them is one of 
the most touching ever written. ' Sir Walter 
speaks to every man as if they were blood-re- 
lations ' was the common formula in which this 
demeanour was described. Take this illustra- 
tion. There was a little hunchbacked tailor, 
named William Goodfellow, living on his 
property (but who at Abbotsford was termed 
Robin Goodfellow) . This tailor was employed 
to make the curtains for the new library, and 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 171 

had been very j)roud of his work, but fell ill 
soon afterwards, and Sir Walter was unremit- 
ting in his attention to him. ' I can never for- 
get,' says Mr. Lockhart, ' the evening on which 
the poor tailor died. When Scott entered the 
hovel, he found everything silent, and inferred 
from the looks of the good women in attend- 
ance that the patient had fallen asleep, and 
that thej'' feared his sleep was the final one. 
He murmured some syllables of kind regret; 
at the sound of his voice the dying tailor un- 
closed his eyes, and eagerly and wistfully sat 
up, clasping his hands with an expression of 
rapturous gratefulness and devotion that, in 
the midst of deformity, disease, pain, and 
wretchedness, was at once beautiful and sub- 
lime. He cried with a loud voice, " The Lord 
bless and reward you! " and expired with the 
effort.' ^ Still more striking is the account of 
his relation with Tom Purdie, the wide- 
mouthed, undersized, broad-shouldered, square- 
made, thin-flanked woodsman, so well known 
afterwards by all Scott's friends as he waited 
for his master in his green shooting- jacket, 
white hat, and drab trousers. Scott first made 
Tom Purdie's acquaintance in his capacity as 

^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, vii. 218. 



172 LIFE OF 

judge, the man being brought before him for 
poaching, at the time that Scott was Hving at 
Ashestiel. Tom gave so touching an account 
of his circumstances — work scarce — wife and 
children in want — grouse abundant — and his 
account of himself was so fresh and even 
humorous, that Scott let him off the penalty, 
and made him his shepherd. He discharged 
these duties so faithfully that he came to be 
his master's forester and factotum, and indeed 
one of his best friends, though a little dis- 
posed to tyrannize over Scott in his own fash- 
ion. A visitor describes him as unpacking a 
box of new importations for his master ' as if 
he had been sorting some toys for a restless 
child.' But after Sir Walter had lost the 
bodily strength requisite for riding, and was 
too melancholy for ordinary conversation, 
Tom Purdie's shoulder was his great stay in 
wandering through his woods, for with him he 
felt that he might either speak or be silent at 
his pleasure. ' What a blessing there is,' Scott 
wrote in his diary at that time, ' in a fellow 
like Tom, whom no familiarity can spoil, whom 
you may scold and praise and joke with, know- 
ing the quality of the man is unalterable in his 
love and reverence to his master.' After 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 173 

Scott's failure, Mr. Lockhart writes : ' Before 
I leave this period, I must note how greatly I 
admired the manner in which all his dependents 
appeared to have met the reverse of his for- 
tunes — a reverse which inferred very consider- 
able alteration in the circumstances of every 
one of them. The butler, instead of being the 
easy chief of a large establishment, was now 
doing half the work of the house at probably 
half his former wages. Old Peter, who had 
been for five and twenty years a dignified 
coachman, was now ploughman in ordinary, 
only putting his horses to the carriage upon 
high and rare occasions ; and so on with all the 
rest that remained of the ancient train. And 
all, to my view, seemed happier than they had 
ever done before.' ^ The illustration of this 
true confidence between Scott and his servants 
and labourers might be extended to almost any 
length. 

^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, ix. 170. 



174 LIFE OF 



CHAPTER IX 

SCOTT^S PARTNERSHIPS WITH THE BALLANTYNES 



\|Qf 



EFORE I make mention of Scott's 
greatest works, his novels, I must say 
a few words of his relation to the Bal- 
lantyne Brothers, who involved him, and were 
involved by him, in so many troubles, and with 
whose name the story of his broken fortunes 
is inextricably bound up. James Ballantyne, 
the elder brother, was a schoolfellow of Scott's 
at Kelso, and was the editor and manager of 
the Kelso Mail, an anti-democratic journal, 
which had a fair circulation. Ballantyne was 
something of an artist as regarded ' type,' and 
Scott got him therefore to print his Minstrelsy 
of the Border, the excellent workmanship of 
which attracted much attention in London. In 
1802, on Scott's suggestion, Ballantyne moved 
to Edinburgh ; and to help him to move, Scott, 
who was already meditating some investment 
of his little capital in business other than 
literary, lent him 500/. Between this and 1805, 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 175 

when Scott first became a partner of Ballan- 
tyne's in the printing business, he used every 
exertion to get legal and literary printing 
offered to James Ballantyne, and, according 
to Mr. Lockhart, the concern ' grew and pros- 
pered.' At Whitsuntide, 1805, when The Lay 
had been published, but before Scott had the 
least idea of the prospects of gain which mere 
literature would open to him, he formally, 
though secretly, joined Ballantyne as a part- 
ner in the printing business. He explains his 
motives for this step, so far at least as he then 
recalled them, in a letter written after his mis- 
fortunes, in 1826. ' It is easy,' he said, ' no 
doubt for any friend to blame me for entering 
into connexion with commercial matters at all. 
But I wish to know what I could have done 
better — excluded from the bar, and then from 
all profits for six years, by my colleague's pro- 
longed life. Literature was not in those days 
what poor Constable has made it ; and with my 
little capital I was too glad to make commer- 
cially the means of supporting my family. I 
got but 600/. for The Lay of the Last Min- 
strel, and — it was a price that made men's hair 
stand on end — 1000/. for Marmion. I have 
been far from suffering by James Ballantyne. 



176 LIFE OF 

I owe it to him to say, that his difficulties, as 
well as his advantages, are owing to me.' 

This, though a true, was probably a very 
imperfect account of Scott's motives. He 
ceased practising at the bar, I do not doubt, in 
great degree from a kind of hurt pride at his 
ill-success, at a time when he felt during every 
month more and more confidence in his own 
powers. He believed, with some justice, that 
he understood some of the secrets of popularity 
in literature, but he had always, till towards 
the end of his life, the greatest horror of rest- 
ing on literature alone as his main resource; 
and he was not a man, nor was Lady Scott a 
woman, to pinch and live narrowly. Were it 
only for his lavish generosity, that kind of life 
would have been intolerable to him. Hence, 
he reflected, that if he could but use his liter- 
ary instinct to feed some commercial under- 
taking, managed by a man he could trust, he 
might gain a considerable percentage on his 
little capital, without so embarking in com- 
merce as to oblige him either to give up his 
status as a sheriff, or his official duties as a 
clerk of session, or his literary undertakings. 
In his old schoolfellow, James Ballantyne, he 
believed he had found just such an agent as 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 177 

he wanted, the requisite link between hteraiy 
genius hke his own, and the world which reads 
and buys books; and he thought that, by feel- 
ing his way a little, he might secure, through 
this partnership, besides the then very bare re- 
wards of authorship, at least a share in those 
more liberal rewards which commercial men 
managed to squeeze for themselves out of suc- 
cessful authors. And, further, he felt — and 
this was probably the greatest unconscious 
attraction for him in this scheme — that with 
James Ballantyne for his partner he should be 
the real leader and chief, and rather in the 
position of a patron and benefactor of his col- 
league, than of one in any degree dependent on 
the generosity or approval of others. ' If I 
have a very strong passion in the world,' he 
once wrote of himself — and the whole story of 
his life seems to confirm it — ' it is pride.' ^ In 
James Ballantyne he had a faithful, but almost 
humble friend, with whom he could deal much 
as he chose, and fear no wound to his pride. 
He had himself helped Ballantyne to a higher 
line of business than any hitherto aspired to 
by him. It was his own book which first got 
the Ballantyne press its public credit. And if 

^Lockhart's Life of Scott, viii. 221. 



178 LIFE OF 

he could but create a great commercial success 
upon this foundation, he felt that he should 
be fairly entitled to share in the gains, which 
not merely his loan of capital, but his 
foresight and courage had opened to Bal- 
lantyne. 

And it is quite possible that Scott might have 
succeeded — or at all events not seriously failed 
— if he had been content to stick to the print- 
ing firm of James Ballantyne and Co., and had 
not launched also into the book-selling and 
publishing firm of John Ballantyne and Co., 
or had never begun the wild and dangerous 
practice of forestalling his gains, and spending 
wealth which he had not earned. But when by 
way of feeding the printing press of James 
Ballantyne and Co., he started in 1809 the 
bookselling and publishing firm of John Bal- 
lantyne and Co., using as his agent a man as 
inferior in sterling worth to James, as James 
was inferior in general ability to himself, he 
carefully dug a mine under his own feet, of 
which we can only say, that nothing except his 
genius could have prevented it from exploding 
long before it did. The truth was evidently 
that James Ballantyne's respectful homage, 
and John's humorous appreciation, all but 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 179 

blinded Scott's eyes to the utter inadequacy of 
either of these men, esiDccially the latter, to 
supply the deficiencies of his own character for 
conducting business of this kind with proper 
discretion. James Ballantyne, who was pom- 
pous and indolent, though thoroughly honest, 
and not without some intellectual insight, Scott 
used to call Aldiborontiphoscophornio. John, 
who was clever but frivolous, dissipated, and 
tricksy, he termed Rigdumfunnidos, or his 
' little Picaroon.' It is clear from Mr. Lock- 
hart's account of the latter that Scott not only 
did not respect, but despised him, though he 
cordially liked him, and that he passed over, in 
judging him, vices which in a brother or son of 
his own he would severely have rebuked. I 
believe myself that his liking for co-operation 
with both, was greatly founded on his feeling 
that they were simply creatures of his, to whom 
he could pretty well dictate what he wanted, — 
colleagues whose inferiority to himself uncon- 
sciously flattered his pride. He was evidently 
inclined to resent bitterly the patronage of 
publishers. He sent word to Blackwood once 
with great hauteur, after some suggestion 
from that house had been made to him which 
appeared to him to interfere with his independ- 



180 LIFE OF 

ence as an author, that he was one of * the 
Black Hussars ' of Hterature, who would not 
endure that sort of treatment. Constable, 
who was really very liberal, hurt his sensitive 
pride through the Edinburgh Review j, of which 
Jeffrey was editor. Thus the Ballantynes' 
great deficiency — that neither of them had any 
independent capacity for the publishing busi- 
ness, which would in any way hamper his dis- 
cretion — though this is just what commercial 
partners ought to have had, or they were not 
worth their salt, — was, I believe, precisely what 
induced this Black Hussar of literature, in 
spite of his otherwise considerable sagacity and 
knowledge of human nature, to select them for 
partners. 

And yet it is strange that he not only chose 
them, but chose the inferior and lighter-headed 
of the two for far the more important and 
difficult of the two businesses. In the 
printing concern tliere was at least this to 
be said, that of part of the business — the 
selection of type and the superintendence 
of the mechanical part, — James Ballantyne 
was a good judge. He was never appar- 
ently a good man of business, for he kept 
no strong hand over the expenditure and ac- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 181 

counts, which is the core of success in every 
concern. But he understood types; and his 
customers were pubhshers, a wealthy and judi- 
cious class, who were not likely all to fail to- 
gether. But to select a ' Rigdumfunnidos,' — 
a dissipated comic-song singer and horse-fan- 
cier, — for the head of a publishing concern, 
was indeed a kind of insanity. It is told of 
John Ballantyne, that after the successful ne- 
gotiation with Constable for Rob Roy, and 
while ' hopping up and down in his glee, he 
exclaimed, " Is Rob's gun here, Mr. Scott? 
Would you object to my trying the old barrel 
with a few de joy? " " Nay, Mr. Puff," said 
Scott, " it would burst and blow you to the devil 
before your time." " Johnny, my man," said 
Constable, " what the mischief put drawing 
at sight into your head? " Scott laughed heart- 
ily at this innuendo; and then observing that 
the little man felt somewhat sore, called atten- 
tion to the notes of a bird in the adjoining 
shrubbery. " And by-the-bye," said he, as they 
continued listening, " 'tis a long time, Johnny, 
since we have had ' the Cobbler of Kelso.' " 
Mr. Puff forthwith jumped up on a mass of 
stone, and seating himself in the proper atti- 
tude of one working with an awl, began a 



182 LIFE OF 

favourite interlude, mimicking a certain son of 
Crispin, at whose stall Scott and he had often 
lingered when they were schoolboys, and a 
blackbird, the only companion of his cell, that 
used to sing to him while he talked and whistled 
to it all day long. With this performance 
Scott was always delighted. Nothing could be 
richer than the contrast of the bird's wild, 
sweet notes, some of which he imitated with 
wonderful skill, and the accompaniment of the 
cobbler's hoarse, cracked voice, uttering all 
manner of endearing epithets, which Johnny 
multiplied and varied in a style worth}^ of the 
old women in Rabelais at the birth of Panta- 
gruel.' ^ That passage gives precisely the kind 
of estimation in which John Ballantyne was 
held both by Scott and Constable. And yet 
it was to him that Scott entrusted the danger- 
ous and difficult duty of setting up a new pub- 
lishing house as a rival to the best publishers 
of the day. No doubt Scott really relied on 
his own judgment for working the publishing 
house. But except where his own books were 
concerned, no judgment could have been worse. 
In the first place he was always wanting to 
do literary jobs for a friend, and so advised 

2 Lockhart's Life of Scott, v. 218. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 183 

the publishing of all sorts of unsaleable books, 
because his friends desired to write them. In 
the next place, he was a genuine historian, and 
one of the antiquarian kind himself; he was 
himself really interested in all sorts of histori- 
cal and antiquarian issues, — and very mis- 
takenly gave the public credit for wishing 
to know what he himself wished to know. 
I should add that Scott's good nature and 
kindness of heart not only led him to help 
on many books which he knew in himself could 
never answer, and some which, as he well knew, 
would be altogether worthless, but that it 
greatly biassed his own intellectual judgment. 
Nothing can be plainer than that he really held 
his intimate friend, Joanna Bail.lie, a very 
great dramatic poet, a much greater poet than 
himself, for instance; one fit to be even men- 
tioned as following — at a distance — in the 
track of Shakespeare. He supposes Erskine 
to exhort him thus : — 

* Or, if to touch such chord be thine, 
Restore the ancient tragic line, 
And emulate the notes that rung 
From the wild harp which silent hung 
By silver Avon's holy shore, 
Till twice a hundred years roll'd o'er, — 



184 LIFE OF 

When she, the bold enchantress, came 
With fearless hand and heart on flame, 
From the pale willow snatch'd the treasure, 
And swept it with a kindred measure. 
Till Avon's swans, while rung the grove 
With Montfort's hate and Basil's love. 
Awakening at the inspired strain, 
Deem'd their own Shakespeare lived again.* 

Avon's swans must have been Avon's geese, 
I think, if they had deemed anything of the 
kind. Joanna BaiUie's dramas are ' nice,' and 
rather dull ; now and then she can write a song 
with the ease and sweetness that suggest 
Shakespearian echoes. But Scott's judgment 
was obviously blinded by his just and warm re- 
gard for Joanna Baillie herself. 

Of course with such interfering causes to 
bring unsaleable books to the house — of course 
I do not mean that John Ballantyne and Co. 
published for Joanna Baillie, or that they 
would have lost by it if they had — the new 
firm published all sorts of books which did not 
sell at all; while John Ballantyne himself in- 
dulged in a great many expenses and dissipa- 
tions, for which John Ballantyne and Co. had 
to pay. Nor was it very easy for a partner 
who himself drew bills on the future — even 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 185 

though he were the well-spring of all the pay- 
ing business the company had — to be very 
severe on a fellow-partner who supplied his 
pecuniary needs in the same way. At all 
events, there is no question that all through 
1813 and 1814 Scott was kept in constant sus- 
pense and fear of bankruptcy, by the ill suc- 
cess of John Ballantyne and Co., and the utter 
want of straightforwardness in John Ballan- 
tyne himself as to the bills out, and which had 
to be provided against. It was the publication 
of Waverley, and the consequent opening up 
of the richest vein not only in Scott's own 
genius, but in his popularity with the public, 
which alone ended these alarms ; and the many 
unsaleable works of John Ballantyne and Co. 
were then gradually disposed of to Constable 
and others, to their own great loss, as part of 
the conditions on which they received a share 
in the copyi'ight of the wonderful novels which 
sold like wildfire. But though in this way the 
publishing business of John Ballantyne and 
Co. was saved, and its aifairs pretty decently 
wound up, the printing firm remained saddled 
with some of their obligations; while Con- 
stable's business, on which Scott depended for 
the means with which he was buying his es- 



186 LIFE OF 

tate, building his castle, and settling money on 
his daughter-in-law, was seriously injured by 
the purchase of all this unsaleable stock. 

I do not think that any one who looks into 
the complicated controversy between the repre- 
sentatives of the Ballantynes and Mr. Lock- 
hart, concerning these matters, can be content 
with Mr. Lockhart's — no doubt perfectly sin- 
cere — judgment on the case. It is obvious that 
amidst these intricate accounts, he fell into one 
or two serious blunders — blunders very unjust 
to James Ballantyne, And without pretend- 
ing to have myself formed any minute judg- 
ment on the details, I think the following 
points clear: — (1.) That James Ballantyne 
was very severely judged by Mr. Lockhart, 
on grounds which were never alleged by Scott 
against him at all, — indeed on grounds on 
which he was expressly exempted from all 
blame by Sir Walter. (2.) That Sir Walter 
Scott was very severely judged by the repre- 
sentatives of the Ballantynes, on grounds on 
which James Ballantyne himself never brought 
any charge against him; on the contrary, he 
declared that he had no charge to bring. (3.) 
That both Scott and his partners invited ruin 
by freely spending gains which they only ex- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 187 

pected to earn, and that in this Scott certainly- 
set an example which he could hardly expect 
feebler men not to follow. On the whole, I 
think the troubles with the Ballantyne brothers 
brought to light not only that eager gambling 
spirit in him, which his grandfather indulged 
with better success and more moderation when 
he bought the hunter with money destined for 
a flock of sheep, and then gave up gambling 
forever, but a tendency still more dangerous, 
and in some respects involving an even greater 
moral defect, — I mean a tendency, chiefly due, 
I think, to a very deep-seated pride, — to pre- 
fer inferior men as working colleagues in 
business. And yet it is clear that if Scott were 
to dabble in publishing at all, he really needed 
the check of men of larger experience, and less 
literary turn of mind. The great majority of 
consumers of popular literature are not, and 
indeed will hardly ever be, literary men; and 
that is precisely why a publisher who is not, in 
the main, literary, — who looks on authors' 
MSS. for the most part with distrust and sus- 
picion, much as a rich man looks at a begging- 
letter, or a sober and judicious fish at an 
angler's fly, — ^is so much less likely to run 
aground than such a man as Scott. The un- 



188 LIFE OF 

tried author should be regarded by a wise pub- 
lisher as a natural enemy, — an enemy indeed 
of a class, rare specimens whereof will always 
be his best friends, and who, therefore, should 
not be needlessly affronted — but also as one of 
a class of whom nineteen out of every twenty 
will dangle before the publisher's eyes wiles 
and hopes and expectations of the most danger- 
ous and illusory character, — which constitute 
indeed the very perils that it is his true func- 
tion in life skilfully to evade. The Ballantynes 
were quite unfit for this function; first, they 
had not the experience requisite for it; next, 
they were altogether too much under Scott's 
influence. No wonder that the partnership 
came to no good, and left behind it the germs 
of calamity even more serious still. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 189 



CHAPTER X 

THE WAVERLEY NOVELS 

XN the summer of 1814, Scott took up 
again and completed — almost at a 
single heat — a fragment of a Jacobite 
story, begun in 1805 and then laid aside. It 
was published anonymously, and its astonish- 
ing success turned back again the scales of 
Scott's fortunes, already inclining ominously 
towards a catastrophe. This story was TVaver- 
ley. Mr. Carlyle has praised Waverley above 
its fellows. * On the whole, contrasting 
Waverley, which was carefully written, with 
most of its followers w^hich were written ex- 
tempore, one may regret the extempore 
method.' This is, however, a very unfortunate 
judgment. Not one of the whole series of 
novels appears to have been written more com- 
pletely extempore than the great bulk of 
Waverley, including almost everything that 
made it either popular with the million or fas- 
cinating to the fastidious ; and it is even likely 



190 LIFE OF 

that this is one of the causes of its excel- 
lence. 

* The last two volumes,' says Scott, in a let- 
ter to Mr. Morritt, ' were written in three 
weeks.' And here is Mr. Lockhart's descrip- 
tion of the effect which Scott's incessant toil 
during the composition, produced on a friend 
whose window happened to command the 
novelist's study: — 

Happening to pass through Edinburgh in June, 
1814, I dined one day with the gentleman in question 
(now the Honourable William Menzies, one of the Su- 
preme Judges at the Cape of Good Hope), whose 
residence was then in George Street, situated very near 
to, and at right angles with, North Castle Street. It 
was a party of very young persons, most of them, like 
Menzies and myself, destined for the Bar of Scotland, 
all gay and thoughtless, enjoying the first flush of man- 
hood, with little remembrance of the yesterday, or care 
of the morrow. When my companion's worthy father 
and uncle, after seeing two or three bottles go round, 
left the juveniles to themselves, the weather being hot, 
we adjourned to a library which had one large window 
looking northwards. After carousing here for an hour 
or more, I observed that a shade had come over the aspect 
of my friend, who happened to be placed immediately 
opposite to myself, and said something that intimated 
a fear of his being unwell. 'No,' said he, ' I shall be 
well enough presently, if you will onlj^ let me sit where 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 191 

you are, and take my chair; for there is a confounded 
hand in sight of me here, which has often bothered me 
before, and now it won't let me fill my glass with a good 
will.' I rose to change places with him accordingly, and 
he pointed out to me this hand, which, like the writing 
on Belshazzar's wall, disturbed his hour of hilarity. 
* Since we sat down,' he said, ' I have been watching 
it — it fascinates my eye — it never stops — page after page 
is finished, and thrown on that heap of MS., and still it 
goes on unwearied; and so it will be till candles are 
brought in, and God knows how long after that. It is 
the same every night — I can't stand a sight of it when I 
am not at my books.' ' Some stupid, dogged engrossing 
clerk, probably,' exclaimed myself, ' or some other giddy 
youth in our society.' * No, boys,' said our host; ' I 
well know what hand it is — 'tis Walter Scott's.' ^ 

If that is not extempore writing, it is diffi- 
cult to say what extempore writing is. But 
in truth there is no evidence that any one of 
the novels was laboured, or even so much as 
carefully composed. Scott's method of com- 
position was always the same ; and, when writ- 
ing an imaginative work, the rate of progress 
seems to have been pretty even, depending 
much more on the absence of disturbing en- 
gagements than on any mental irregularity. 
The morning was always his brightest time; 

^Lockhart's Life of Scott, iv. 171-3. 



192 LIFE OF 

but morning or evening, in country or in town, 
well or ill, writing with his own pen or dictating 
to an amanuensis in the intervals of screaming- 
fits due to the torture of cramp in the stomach, 
Scott spun away at his imaginative web almost 
as evenly as a silkworm spins at its golden 
cocoon. Nor can I detect the slightest trace of 
any difference in quality between the stories, 
such as can be reasonably ascribed to compara- 
tive care or haste. There are differences, and 
even great differences, of course, ascribable to 
the less or greater suitability of the subject 
chosen to Scott's genius, but I can find no trace 
of the sort of cause to which Mr. Carlyle re- 
fers. Thus, few, I suppose, would hesitate to 
say that while Old Mortality is very near, if 
not quite, the finest of Scott's works. The 
Black Dwarf is not far from the other end of 
the scale. Yet the two were written in im- 
mediate succession {The Black Dwarf being 
the first of the two), and were published to- 
gether, as the first series of Tales of my Land- 
lord, in 1816. Nor do I think that any com- 
petent critic would find any clear deterioration 
of quality in the novels of the later years — ■ 
excepting of course' the two written after the 
stroke of paralysis. It is true, of course, that 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 193 

some of the subjects which most powerfully 
stirred his imagination were among his earlier 
themes, and that he could not effectually use 
the same subject twice, though he now and 
then tried it. But making allowance for this 
consideration, the imaginative power of the 
novels is as astonishingly even as the rate of 
composition itself. For my own part, I 
greatly prefer The Fortunes of Nigel (which 
was ^vritten in 1822) to Wavcrley, which was 
begun in 1805, and finished in 1814, and though 
very many better critics would probably de- 
cidedly disagree, I do not think that any of 
them would consider this preference grotesque 
or purely capricious. Indeed, though Anne of 
Geierstein, — the last composed before Scott's 
stroke, — would hardly seem to any careful 
judge the equal of Waverley, I do not much 
doubt that if it had appeared in place of 
Waverley^ it would have excited very nearly 
as much interest and admiration; nor that had 
Waverley appeared in 1829, in place of Anne 
of Geierstein, it would have failed to excite 
very much more. In these fourteen most effec- 
tive years of Scott's literary life, during which 
he wrote twenty-three novels besides shorter 
tales, the best stories appear to have been on 



194 LIFE OF 

the whole the most rapidly written, probably 
because they took the strongest hold of the 
author's imagination. 

Till near the close of his career as an author, 
Scott never avowed his responsibility for any 
of these series of novels, and even took some 
pains to mystify the public as to the identity 
between the author of Waverley and the author 
of Tales of my Landlord. The care with which 
the secret was kept is imputed by Mr. Lock- 
hart in some degree to the habit of mystery 
which had grown upon Scott during his secret 
partnership with the Ballantynes; but in this he 
seems to be confounding two very different 
phases of Scott's character. No doubt he was, 
as a professional man, a little ashamed of his 
commercial speculation, and unwilhng to be- 
tray it. But he was far from ashamed of his 
literary enterprise, though it seems that he was 
at first very anxious lest a comparative failure, 
or even a mere moderate success, in a less am- 
bitious sphere than that of poetry, should en- 
danger the gi'eat reputation he had gained as 
a poet. That was apparently the first reason 
for secrecy. But, over and above this, it is 
clear that the mystery stimulated Scott's 
imagination and saved him trouble as well. He 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 195 

was obviously more free under the veil — free 
from the liability of having to answer for the 
views of life or history suggested in his stories ; 
but besides this, what was of more importance 
to him, the slight disguise stimulated his sense 
of humour, and gratified the whimsical, boyish 
pleasure which he always had in acting an 
imaginary character. He used to talk of him- 
self as a sort of Abou Hassan — a private man 
one day, and acting the part of a monarch the 
next — with the kind of glee which indicated a 
real delight in a change of parts, and I have 
little doubt that he threw himself with the more 
gusto into characters very different from his 
own, in consequence of the pleasure it gave him 
to conceive his friends hopelessly misled by this 
display of traits, with which he supposed that 
they could not have credited him even in imagi- 
nation. Thus besides relieving him of a host 
of compliments which he did not enjoy, and 
enabling him the better to evade an ill-bred 
curiosity, the disguise no doubt was the same 
sort of fillip to the fancy which a mask and 
domino or a fancy dress are to that of their 
wearers. Even in a disguise a man cannot 
cease to be himself; but he can get rid of his 
properly ' imputed ' righteousness — often the 



196 LIFE OF 

greatest burden he has to bear — and of all the 
expectations formed on the strength, as Mr. 
Clough says — 

* Of having been what one has been, 
What one thinks one is, or thinks that others suppose 
one.' 

To some men the freedom of this disguise 
is a real danger and temptation. It never 
could have been so to Scott, who was in the 
main one of the simplest as well as the boldest 
and proudest of men. And as most men per- 
haps would admit that a good deal of even the 
best part of their nature is rather suppressed 
than expressed by the name by which they are 
known in the world, Scott must have felt this 
in a far higher degree, and probably regarded 
the manifold characters under which he was 
known to society, as representing him in some 
respects more justly than any individual name 
could have done. His mind ranged hither and 
thither over a wide field — far beyond that of 
his actual experience — and probably ranged 
over it all the more easily for not being abso- 
lutely tethered to a single class of associations 
by any public confession of his authorship. 
After all, when it became universally known 
tliat Scott was the only author of all these tales, 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 197 

it may be doubted whether the public thought 
as adequately of the imaginative efforts which 
had created them, as they did while they re- 
mained in some doubt whether there was a 
multiplicity of agencies at work, or only one. 
The uncertainty helped them to realize the 
many lives which were really led by the author 
of all these tales, more completely than any 
confession of the individual authorship could 
have done. The shrinking of activity in public 
curiosity and wonder which follows the final 
determination of such ambiguities, is very apt 
to result rather in a dwindling of the imagina- 
tive effort to enter into the genius which gave 
rise to them, than in an increase of respect for 
so manifold a creative power. 

When Scott wrote, such fertility as his in the 
production of novels was regarded with amaze- 
ment approaching to absolute incredulity. 
Yet he was in this respect only the advance- 
guard of a not inconsiderable class of men and 
women who have a special gift for pouring out 
story after story, containing a great variety of 
figures, while retaining a certain even level of 
merit. There is more than one novelist of the 
present day who has far surpassed Scott in the 
number of his tales, and one at least of very 



198 LIFE OF 

high repute, who has, I beheve, produced more 
even within the same time. But though to our 
larger experience, Scott's achievement, in re- 
spect of mere fertihty, is by no means the 
miracle which it once seemed, I do not 
think one of his successors can compare 
with him for a moment in the ease and 
truth with which he painted, not merely 
the life of his own time and country — sel- 
dom indeed that of precisely his own time — 
but that of days long past, and often too of 
scenes far distant. The most powerful of all 
his stories, Old Mortality, was the story of a 
period more than a century and a quarter be- 
fore he wrote; and others, — which though in- 
ferior to this in force, are nevertheless, when 
compared with the so-called historical romances 
of any other English wi'iter, what sunlight is 
to moonlight, if you can say as much for the 
latter as to admit even that comparison, — go 
back to the period of the Tudors, that is, two 
centuries and a half. Quentin Durward, which 
is all but amongst the best, runs back farther 
still, far into the previous century, while Ivan- 
hoe and The Talisman, though not among the 
greatest of Scott's works, carry us back more 
than five hundred years. The new class of ex- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 199 

tempore novel writers, though more consider- 
able than, sixty years ago, any one could have 
expected ever to see, is still limited, and on any 
high level of merit will probably always be lim- 
ited, to the delineation of the times of which 
the narrator has personal experience. Scott 
seemed to have had something very like per- 
sonal experience of a few centuries at least, 
judging by the ease and freshness with which 
he poured out his stories of these centuries, 
and though no one can pretend that even he 
could describe the period of the Tudors as Miss 
Austen described the country parsons and 
squires of George the Third's reign, or as Mr. 
Trollope describes the politicians and hunting- 
men of Queen Victoria's, it is nevertheless the 
evidence of a greater imagination to make us 
live so familiarly as Scott does amidst the po- 
litical and religious controversies of two or 
three centuries' duration, to be the actual wit- 
nesses, as it were, of Margaret of Anjou's 
throes of vain ambition, and Mary Stuart's 
fascinating remorse, and Elizabeth's domineer- 
ing and jealous balancings of noble against 
noble, of James the First's shrewd pedantries, 
and the Regent Murray's large forethought, 
of the politic craft of Argyle, the courtly ruth- 



200 LIFE OF 

lessness of Claverhouse, and the high-bred 
clemency of Monmouth, than to reflect in 
countless modifications the freaks, figures, and 
fashions of our own time. 

The most striking feature of Scott's ro- 
mances is that, for the most part, they are 
pivoted on public rather than mere private in- 
terests and passions. With but few excep- 
tions — {The Antiquary, St. Ronans Well, 
and Guy Mannering are the most important) 
— Scott's novels give us an imaginative view, 
not of mere individuals, but of individuals as 
they are affected by the public strifes and social 
divisions of the age. And this it is which gives 
his books so large an interest for old and young, 
soldiers and statesmen, the world of society and 
the recluse, alike. You can hardly read ony 
novel of Scott's and not become better aware 
what public life and political issues mean. And 
yet there is no artificiality, no elaborate atti- 
tudinizing before the antique mirrors of the 
past, like Bulwer's, no dressing out of clothes- 
horses like G. P. R. James. The boldness and 
freshness of the present are carried back into 
the past, and you see Papists and Puritans, 
Cavaliers and Roundheads, Jews, Jacobites, 
and freebooters, preachers, schoolmasters, mer- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 201 

cenary soldiers, gipsies, and beggars, all living 
the sort of life which the reader feels that in 
their circumstances and under the same condi- 
tions of time and place and parentage, he 
might have lived too. Indeed, no man can read 
Scott without being more of a public man, 
whereas the ordinary novel tends to make its 
readers rather less of one than before. 

Next, though most of these stories are 
rightly called romances, no one can avoid ob- 
serving that they give that side of life which is 
unromantic, quite as vigorously as the romantic 
side. This was not true of Scott's poems, 
which only expressed one-half of his nature, 
and were almost pure romances. But in the 
novels the business of life is even better por- 
trayed than its sentiments. Mr. Bagehot, one 
of the ablest of Scott's critics, has pointed out 
this admirably in his essay on The Waverly 
Novels. ' Many historical novelists,' he says, 
' especially those who with care and pains have 
read up the detail, are often evidently in a 
strait how to pass from their history to their 
sentiment. The fancy of Sir Walter could not 
help connecting the two. If he had given us 
the English side of the race to Derby, he would 
have described the Bank of Engla7id paying in 



202 LIFE OF 

sixpences, and also the loves of the cashier.'' 
No one who knows the novels well can question 
this. Fergus Maclvor's ways and means, his 
careful arrangements for receiving subsidies in 
blackmail, are as carefully recorded as his lav- 
ish Highland hospitalities; and when he sends 
his silver cup to the Gaelic bard who chaunts 
his greatness, the faithful historian does not 
forget to let us know that the cup is his last, 
and that he is hard-pressed for the generosities 
of the future. So too the habitual thievishness 
of the Highlanders is pressed upon us quite as 
vividly as their gallantry and superstitions. 
And so careful is Sir Walter to paint the petty 
pedantries of the Scotch traditional conserva- 
tism, that he will not spare even Charles 
Edward — of whom he draws so graceful a 
picture — the humiliation of submitting to old 
Bradwardine's ' solemn act of homage,' but 
makes him go through the absurd ceremony of 
placing his foot on a cushion to have its brogue 
unlatched by the dry old enthusiast of heraldic 
lore. Indeed it was because Scott so much en- 
joyed the contrast between the high sentiment 
of life and its dry and often absurd detail, that 
his imagination found so much freer a vent in 
the historical romance, than it ever found in the 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 203 

romantic poem. Yet he clearly needed the ro- 
mantic excitement of picturesque scenes and 
historical interests, too. I do not think he 
would ever have gained any brilliant success in 
the narrower region of the domestic novel. He 
said himself, in expressing his admiration of 
Miss Austen, ' The big bow-wow strain I can 
do myself, like any now going, but the ex- 
quisite touch which renders ordinary common- 
place things and characters interesting, from 
the truth of the description and the sentiment, 
is denied to me.' Indeed he tried it to some ex- 
tent in St. Ronans Well, and so far as he tried 
it, I think he failed. Scott needed a certain 
largeness of type, a strongly-marked class-life, 
and, where it was possible, a free, out-of-doors 
life, for his delineations. No one could paint 
beggars and gipsies, and wandering fiddlers, 
and mercenary soldiers, and peasants and 
farmers and lawyers, and magistrates, and 
preachers, and courtiers, and statesmen, and 
best of all perhaps queens and kings, with any- 
thing like his ability. But when it came to de- 
scribing the small differences not due to exter- 
nal habits, so much as to internal sentiment or 
education, or mere domestic circumstance, he 
was beyond his proper field. In the sketch of 



204 LIFE OF 

the St. Ronan's Spa and the company at the 
tdble-d'hote, he is of course somewhere near the 
mark, — he was too able a man to fall far short 
of success in anything he really gave to the 
world; but it is not interesting. Miss Austen 
would have made Lady Penelope Penfeather 
a hundred times as amusing. We turn to Meg 
Dods and Touchwood, and Cargill, and Cap- 
tain Jekyl, and Sir Bingo Binks, and to Clara 
Mowbray, — i. e. to the lives really moulded by 
large and specific causes, for enjoyment, and 
leave the small gossip of the company at the 
Wells as, relatively at least, a failure. And it 
is well for all the world that it was so. The 
domestic novel, when really of the highest kind, 
is no doubt a perfect work of art, and an un- 
failing source of amusement; but it has noth- 
ing of the tonic influence, the large instructive- 
ness, the stimulating intellectual air, of Scott's 
historic tales. Even when Scott is farthest 
from reality — as in Ivanhoe or The Monastery 
— he makes you open your eyes to all sorts of 
historical conditions to which you would other- 
wise be blind. The domestic novel, even when 
its art is perfect, gives little but pleasure at the 
best ; at the worst it is simply scandal idealized. 
Scott often confessed his contempt for his 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 205 

own heroes. He said of Edward Waverly, for 
instance, that he was ' a sneaking piece of im- 
becility/ and that ' if he had married Flora, 
she would have set him up upon the chimney- 
piece as Count Borowlaski's wife used to do 
with him. I am a bad hand at depicting a hero, 
properly so called, and have an unfortunate 
propensity for the dubious characters of border- 
ers, buccaneers. Highland robbers, and all others 
of a Robin-Hood description.' ^ In another let- 
ter he says, ' My rogue always, in despite of me, 
turns out my hero.' ^ And it seems very likely 
that in most of the situations Scott describes 
so well, his own course would have been that of 
his wilder impulses, and not that of his reason. 
Assuredly he would never have stopped hesi- 
tating on the line between opposite courses as 
his Waverleys, his Mortons, his Osbaldistones 
do. Whenever he was really involved in a party 
strife, he flung prudence and impartiality to 
the winds, and went in like the hearty partisan 
which his strong impulses made of him. But 
granting this, I do not agree with his condem- 
nation of all his own colourless heroes. How- 
ever much they differed in nature from Scott 

- Lockhart's Life of Scott, iv. ITi^-G. 
3 Lockhart's Life of Scott, iv. 46. 



206 LIFE OF 

himself, the even balance of their reason 
against their sympathies is certainly well con- 
ceived, is in itself natural, and is an admirable 
expedient for effecting that which was prob- 
ably its real use to Scott, — the affording an 
opportunity for the delineation of all the pros 
and cons of the case, so that the characters on 
both sides of the struggle should be properly 
understood. Scott's imagination was clearly 
far wider — was far more permeated with the 
fixed air of sound judgment — than his practi- 
cal impulses. He needed a machinery for dis- 
playing his insight into both sides of a public 
quarrel, and his colourless heroes gave him the 
instrument he needed. Both in Morton's case 
(in Old Mortality) ,and in Waverley's, the hesi- 
tation is certainly well described. Indeed in 
relation to the controversy between Covenant- 
ers and Royalists, while his political and mar- 
tial prepossessions went with Claverhouse, his 
reason and educated moral feeling certainly 
were clearly identified with Morton. 

It is, however, obviously true that Scott's 
heroes are mostly created for the sake of the 
facility they give in delineating the other char- 
acters, and not the other characters for the 
sake of the heroes. They are the imaginative 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 207 

neutral ground, as it were, on which opposing 
influences are brought to play ; and what Scott 
best loved to paint was those who, whether by 
nature, by inheritance, or by choice, had be- 
come unique and characteristic types of one- 
sided feeling, not those who were merely in 
process of growth, and had not ranged them- 
selves at all. Mr. Carlyle, who, as I have said 
before, places Scott's romances far below their 
real level, maintains that these great types of 
his are drawn from the outside, and not made 
actually to live. ' His Bailie Jarvies, Din- 
monts, Dalgettys (for their name is legion), 
do look and talk like what they give themselves 
out for; they are, if not created and made poet- 
ically alive, yet deceptively enacted as a good 
player might do them. What more is wanted, 
then? For the reader lying on a sofa, nothing 
more; yet for another sort of reader much. 
It were a long chapter to unfold the difference 
in drawing a character between a Scott and a 
Shakespeare or Goethe. Yet it is a difference 
literally immense ; they are of a different spe- 
cies ; the value of the one is not to be counted 
in the coin of the other. We might say in a 
short word, which covers a long matter, that 
your Shakespeare fashions his characters from 



208 LIFE OF 

the heart outwards; your Scott fashions them 
from the skin inwards, never getting near the 
heart of them. The one set become Hving men 
and women; the other amount to Httle more 
than mechanical cases, deceptively painted au- 
tomatons.' * And then he goes on to contrast 
Fenella in Peveril of the Peak with Goethe's 
Mignon. Mr. Carlyle could hardly have chosen 
a less fair comparison. If Goethe is to be 
judged by his women, let Scott be judged by 
his men. So judged, I think Scott will, as a 
painter of character, — of course, I am not now 
speaking of him as a poet, — come out far above 
Goethe. Excepting the hero of his first drama 
(Gotz of the iron hand) , which by the way was 
so much in Scott's line that his first essay in 
poetry was to translate it — not very well — I 
doubt if Goethe was ever successful with his 
pictures of men. Wilhelm Meister is, as Nie- 
buhr truly said, ' a menagerie of tame animals.' 
Doubtess Goethe's women — certainly his 
women of culture — are more truly and in- 
wardly conceived and created than Scott's. 
Except Jeanie Deans and Madge Wildfire, 
and perhaps Lucy Ashton, Scott's women are 
apt to be uninteresting, either pink and white 

^ Carlyle's Miscellaneous Essays, iv. 174-5. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 209 

toys, or hardish women of the world. But then 
no one can compare the men of the two writers, 
and not see Scott's vast pre-eminence on that 
side. 

I think the deficiency of his pictures of 
women, odd as it seems to say so, should be 
greatly attributed to his natural chivalry. His 
conception of women of his own or a higher 
class was always too romantic. He hardly ven- 
tured, as it M^ere, in his tenderness for them, 
to look deeply into their little weaknesses and 
intricacies of character. With women of an 
inferior class he had not this feeling. Nothing 
can be more perfect than the manner in which 
he blends the dairy- woman and woman of busi- 
ness in Jeanie Deans, with the lover and the 
sister. But once make a woman beautiful, or 
in any way an object of homage to him, and 
Scott bowed so low before the image of her, 
that he could not go deep into her heart. 
He could no more have analyzed such a woman, 
as Thackeray analyzed Lady Castlewood, or 
Amelia, or Becky, or as George Eliot ana- 
lyzed Rosamond Vincy, than he could have 
vivisected Camp or Maida. To some extent, 
therefore, Scott's pictures of women remain 
something in the style of the miniatures of the 



210 LIFE OF 

last age — bright and beautiful beings without 
any special character in them. He was dazzled 
by a fair heroine. He could not take them up 
into his imagination as real beings as he did 
men. But then how living are his men, whether 
coarse or noble ! What a picture, for instance, 
is that in A Legend of Montrose of the con- 
ceited, pragmatic, but prompt and dauntless 
soldier of fortune, rejecting Ar gyle's attempts 
to tamper with him, in the dungeon at Inverary, 
suddenly throwing himself on the disguised 
Duke so soon as he detects him by his voice, and 
wresting from him the means of his own liber- 
ation ! Who could read that scene and say for 
a moment that Dalgetty is painted ' from the 
skin inwards'? It was just Scott himself 
breathing his own life through the habits of a 
good specimen of the mercenary soldier — real- 
izing where the spirit of hire would end and the 
sense of honour would begin — and preferring, 
even in a dungeon, the audacious policy of a 
sudden attack to that of crafty negotiation. 
What a picture (and a very different one) 
again is that in Redgauntlet of Peter Peebles, 
the mad litigant, with face emaciated by pov- 
erty and anxiety, and rendered wild by ' an 
insane lightness about the eyes,' dashing into 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 211 

the English magistrate's court for a warrant 
against his fugitive counsel. Or, to take a 
third instance, as different as possible from 
either, how powerfully conceived is the situa- 
tion in OM Mortality, where Balfour of Bur- 
ley, in his fanatic fury at the defeat of his plan 
for a new rebellion, pushes the oak-tree, which 
connects his wild retreat with the outer world, 
into the stream, and tries to slay Morton for 
oj)posing him. In such scenes and a hundred 
others — for these are mere random examples — 
Scott undoubtedly painted his masculine fig- 
ures from as deep and inward a conception of 
the character of the situation as Goethe ever 
attained, even in drawing Mignon, or Klar- 
chen, or Gretchen. The distinction has no real 
existence. Goethe's pictures of women were 
no doubt the intuitions of genius; and so are 
Scott's of men — and here and there of his 
women too. Professional women he can 
always paint with power. Meg Dods, the inn- 
keeper, Meg Merrilies, the gipsy, Mause Head- 
rigg, the Covenanter, Elspeth, the old fishwife 
in The Antiquary, and the old crones employed 
to nurse and watch, and lay out the corpse, in 
The Bride of Lammermoor, are all in their way 
impressive figures. 



212 LIFE OF 

And even in relation to women of a rank 
more fascinating to Scott, and whose inner 
character was perhaps on that account less 
familiar to his imagination, grant him but a 
few hints from history, and he draws a picture 
which, for vividness and brilliancy, may almost 
compare with Shakespeare's own studies in 
English history. Had Shakespeare painted the 
scene in The Ahhot, in which Mary Stuart com- 
mands one of her Marys in waiting to tell her 
at what bridal she last danced, and Mary Flem- 
ing blurts out the reference to the marriage of 
Sebastian at Holyrood, would any one hesi- 
tate to regard it as a stroke of genius worthy 
of the great dramatist? This picture of the 
Queen's mind suddenly thrown off its balance, 
and betraying, in the agony of the moment, 
the fear and remorse which every association 
with Darnley conjured up, is painted ' from 
the heart outwards,' not ' from the skin in- 
wards,' if ever there were such a painting in 
the world. Scott hardly ever failed in painting 
kings or peasants, queens or peasant-women. 
There was something in the well-marked type 
of both to catch his imagination, which can 
always hit off the grander features of royalty, 
and the homelier features of laborious humility. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 213 

Is there any sketch traced in lines of more 
sweeping grandeur and more impressive force 
than the following of Mary Stuart's lucid in- 
terval of remorse — lucid compared with her 
ordinary mood, though it was of a remorse that 
was almost delirious — which breaks in upon her 
hour of fascinating condescension? — 

'Are they not a lovely couple, my Fleming? and 
is it not heart-rending to think that I must be their 
ruin ? ' 

' Not so,' said Roland Graeme, * it is we, gracious 
sovereign, who will be your deliverers.* ' Ex orbus 
parvulorum! ' said the queen, looking upward; 'if it is 
by the mouth of these children that heaven calls me to 
resume the stately thoughts which become my birth and 
my rights, thou wilt grant them thy protection, and to 
me the power of rewarding their zeal.' Then turning to 
Fleming, she instantly added, ' Thou knowest, my 
friend, whether to make those who have served me 
happy, was not ever Mary's favourite pastime. When 
I have been rebuked by the stern preachers of the Cal- 
vinistic heresy — when I have seen the fierce counte- 
nances of my nobles averted from me, has it not been 
because I mixed in the harmless pleasures of the young 
and gay, and rather for the sake of their happiness 
than my own, have mingled in the masque, the song or 
the dance, with the youth of my household? Well, I 
repent not of it — though Knox termed it sin, and Mor- 
ton degradation — I was happy because I saw happiness 
around me: and woe betide the wretched jealousy that 



214 LIFE OF 

can extract guilt out of the overflowings of an unguarded 
gaiety ! — Fleming, if we are restored to our throne, shall 
we not have one blithesome day at a blithesome bridal, 
of which we must now name neither the bride nor the 
bridegroom ? But that bridegroom shall have the barony 
of Blairgowrie, a fair gift even for a queen to give, and 
that bride's chaplet shall be twined with the fairest 
pearls that ever were found in the depths of Lochlo- 
mond; and thou thyself, Mary Fleming, the best dresser 
of tires that ever busked the tresses of a queen, and who 
would scorn to touch those of any woman of lower rank 
— thou thyself shalt for my love twine them into the 
bride's tresses. — Look, my Fleming, suppose then such 
clustered locks as these of our Catherine, they would not 
put shame upon thy skill.' So saying she passed her 
hand fondly over the head of her youthful favourite, 
while her more aged attendant replied despondently, 
' Alas, madam, your thoughts stray far from home.' 
' They do, my Fleming,' said the queen, ' but is it well 
or kind in you to call them back.'' — God knows they 
have kept the perch this night but too closely. — Come, I 
will recall the gay vision, were it but to punish them. 
Yes, at that blithesome bridal, Mary herself shall for- 
get the weight of sorrows, and the toil of state, and her- 
self once more lead a measure. — At whose wedding was 
it that we last danced, my Fleming.'' I think care has 
troubled my memory — yet something of it I should re- 
member, canst thou not aid me? I know thou canst.' 
' Alas, madam,' replied the lady. ' What,' said Mary, 
' wilt thou not help us so far ? this is a peevish adherence 
to thine own graver opinion which holds our talk as 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 215 

folly. But thou art court-bred and wilt well understand 
me when I say the queen commands Lady Fleming to 
tell her when she led the last hranle.' With a face 
deadly pale and a mien as if she were about to sink into 
the earth, the court-bred dame, no longer daring to 
refuse obedience, faltered out, * Gracious lady — if my 
memory err not — it was at a masque in Holyrood — at 
the marriage of Sebastian.' The unhappy queen, who 
had hitherto listened with a melancholy smile, provoked 
by the reluctance with which the Lady Fleming brouglit 
out her story, at this ill-fated word interrupted her witli 
a shriek so wild and loud that the vaulted apartment 
rang, and both Roland and Catherine sprung to their 
feet in the utmost terror and alarm. Meantime, Mary 
seemed, by the train of horrible ideas thus suddenly ex- 
cited, surprised not only beyond self-command, but for 
the moment beyond the verge of reason. ' Traitress,' 
she said to the Lady Fleming, ' thou wouldst slay thy 
sovereign. Call my French guards — a mot! a moi! mes 
Frangais! — I am beset with traitors in mine own palace 
— they have murdered my husband — Rescue! Rescue! 
for the Queen of Scotland ! ' She started up from her 
chair — her features late so exquisitely lovely in their 
paleness, now inflamed with the fury of frenzy, and 
resembling those of a Bellona. ' We will take the field 
ourself ,' she said ; ' warn the city — warn Lothian and 
Fife — saddle our Spanish barb, and bid French Paris 
see our petronel be charged. Better to die at the head 
of our brave Scotsmen, like our grandfather at Flodden, 
than of a broken heart like our ill-starred father.' ' Be 
patient — be composed, dearest sovereign,' said Cath- 



216 LIFE OF 

erine; and then addressing Lady Fleming angrily, she 
added, ' How could you say aught that reminded her of 
her husband ? ' The word reached the ear of the un- 
happy princess wlio caught it up, speaking with great 
ra])idity, ' Husband ! — what husband ? Not his most 
Christian Majesty — he is ill at ease — he cannot mount 
on horseback — not him of the Lennox — but it was the 
Duke of Orkney thou wouldst say ? ' ' For God's love, 
madam, be patient ! ' said the Lady Fleming. But the 
queen's excited imagination could by no entreaty be 
diverted from its course. ' Bid him come liither to our 
aid,' she said, ' and bring with him his lambs, as he calls 
tliem — Bowton, Hay of Talla, Black Ormiston and his 
kinsman Hob — Fie, how smart they are, and how they 
smell of sulphur! What! closeted with Morton? Nay, 
if the Douglas and the Hepburn hatch the complot to- 
gether, the bird when it breaks the shell will scare 
Scotland, will it not, my Fleming ? ' ' She grows wilder 
and wilder,' said Fleming. ' We have too may hearers 
for these strange words.' ' Roland,' said Catherine, ' in 
the name of God begone! — you cannot aid us here — 
leave us to deal with her alone — away — away ! ' 

And equally fine is the scene in Kenilworth 
in which Elizabeth undertakes the reconcilia- 
tion of the haughty rivals, Sussex and Leices- 
ter, unaware that in the course of the audience 
she herself will have to bear a great strain on 
her self-command, both in her feelings as a 
queen and her feelings as a lover. Her grand 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 217 

rebukes to both, her ill-concealed preference 
for Leicester, her whispered ridicule of Sussex, 
the impulses of tenderness which she stifles, the 
flashes of resentment to which she gives way, 
the triumph of policy over private feeling, her 
imperious impatience when she is baffled, her 
jealousy as she grows suspicious of a personal 
rival, her gratified pride and vanity when the 
suspicion is exchanged for the clear evidence, 
as she supposes, of Leicester's love, and her 
peremptory conclusion of the audience, bring 
before the mind a series of pictures far more 
vivid and impressive than the greatest of his- 
torical painters could fix on canvas, even at the 
cost of the labour of years. Even more bril- 
liant, though not so sustained and diflicult an 
effort of genius, is the later scene in the same 
story, in which Elizabeth drags the unhappy 
Countess of Leicester from her concealment in 
one of the grottoes of Kenilworth Castle, and 
strides oif with her, in a fit of vindictive humil- 
iation and Amazonian fury, to confront her 
with her husband. But this last scene no doubt 
is more in Scott's way. He can always paint 
women in their more masculine moods. Where 
he frequently fails is in the attempt to indicate 
the finer shades of women's nature. In Amy 



218 LIFE OF 

Robsart herself, for example, he is by no means 
generally successful, though in an early scene 
her childish delight in the various orders and 
decorations of her husband is painted with 
much freshness and delicacy. But wherever, 
as in the case of queens, Scott can get a telling 
hint from actual history, he can always so use 
it as to make history itself seem dim to the 
equivalent for it which he gives us. 

And yet, as every one knows, Scott was ex- 
cessively free in his manij)ulations of history 
for the purposes of romance. In Kenilworth he 
represents Shakespeare's plays as already in 
the mouths of courtiers and statesmen, though 
he lays the scene in the eighteenth year of Eliz- 
abeth, when Shakespeare was hardly old 
enough to rob an orchard. In Woodstock, on 
the contrary, he insists, if you compare Sir 
Henry Lee's dates with the facts, that Shake- 
speare died twenty years at least before he ac- 
tually died. The historical basis, again, of 
Woodstock and of Redgauntlet is thoroughly 
untrustworthy, and about all the minuter de- 
tails of history, — unless so far as they were 
characteristic of the age, — I do not suppose 
that Scott in his romances ever troubled him- 
self at all. And yet few historians — not even 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 219 

Scott himself when he exchanged romance for 
history — ever drew the great figures of history 
with so powerful a hand. In M^iting history 
and biography Scott has little or no advantage 
over very inferior men. His pictures of Swift, 
of Dryden, of Napoleon, are in no way very 
vivid. It is only where he is working from the 
pure imagination, — though imagination stirred 
by historic study, — that he paints a picture 
which follows us about, as if with living eyes, 
instead of creating for us a mere series of lines 
and colours. Indeed, whether Scott draws 
truly or falsely, he draws with such genius that 
his pictures of Richard and Saladin, of Louis 
XL and Charles the Bold, of Margaret of 
Anjou and Rene of Provence, of Mary Stuart 
and Elizabeth Tudor, of Sussex and of Leices- 
ter, of James and Charles and Buckingham, 
of the two Dukes of Argyle — the Argyle of 
the time of the revolution, and the Argyle of 
George IL, — of Queen Caroline, of Claver- 
house, and Monmouth, and of Rob Roy, will 
live in English literature beside Shakespeare's 
pictures — probably less faithful if more imag- 
inative — of John and Richard and the later 
Henries, and all the great figures by whom 
they were surrounded. No historical portrait 



220 LIFE OF 

that we possess will take precedence — as a 
mere portrait — of Scott's brilliant study of 
James I. in The Fortunes of Nigel. Take this 
illustration for instance, where George Heriot 
the goldsmith (Jingling Geordie, as the king 
familiarly calls him) has just been speaking 
of Lord Huntinglen, as ' a man of the old 
rough world that will drink and swear ' : 

* O Geordie ! ' exclaimed the king, ' these are auld- 
warld frailties, of whilk we dare not pronounce even 
ourselves absolutely free. But the warld grows worse 
from day to day, Geordie. The juveniles of this age 
may weel say with the poet, — 

* " jEtas parentum pe j or avis tulit 
Nos nequiores — " 

This Dalgarno does not drink so much, aye or swear so 
much, as his father, but he wenches, Geordie, and he 
breaks his word and oath baith. As to what ye say of 
the leddy and the ministers, we are all fallible creatures, 
Geordie, priests and kings as weel as others; and wha 
kens but what that may account for the difference 
between this Dalgarno and his father.^ The earl is the 
vera soul of honour, and cares nae mair for warld's 
gear than a noble hound for the quest of a foulmart; 
but as for his son, he was like to brazen us all out — our- 
selves, Steenie, Baby Charles, and our Council, till he 
heard of the tocher, and then by my kingly crown he 
lap like a cock at a grossart ! These are discrepancies be- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 221 

twixt parent and son not to be accounted for naturally, 
according to Baptista Porta, Michael Scott de secretis, 
and others. Ah, Jingling Geordie, if your clouting the 
caldron, and jingling on pots, pans, and veshels of all 
manner of metal, hadna jingled a' your grammar out of 
your head, I could have touched on that matter to you 
at mair length.' .... Heriot inquired whether Lord 
Dalgarno had consented to do the Lady Hermione jus- 
tice. ' Troth, man, I have small doubt that he will,' 
quoth the king, * I gave him the schedule of her worldly 
substance, which you delivered to us in the council, and 
we allowed him half an hour to chew the cud upon that. 
It is rare reading for bringing him to reason. I left 
Baby Charles and Steenie laying his duty before him, 
and if he can resist doing what they desire him, why I 
wish he would teach me the gate of it. O Geordie, 
Jingling Geordie, it was grand to hear Baby Charles 
laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lec- 
turing on the turpitude of incontinence.' ' I am afraid,' 
said George Heriot, more hastily than prudently, ' I 
might have thought of the old proverb of Satan reprov- 
ing sin.' ' Deil hae our saul, neighbour,' said the king, 
reddening, ' but ye are not blate ! I gie ye licence to 
speak freely, and by our saul, ye do not let the privilege 
become lost, non utendo — it will suffer no negative pre- 
scription in your hands. Is it fit, think ye, that Baby 
Charles should let his thoughts be publicly seen? No, 
no, princes' thoughts are arcana imperii: qui nescit dis- 
simulare, nescit regnare. Every liege subject is bound 
to speak the whole truth to the king, but there is nae rec- 
iprocity of obligation — and for Steenie having been 



222 LIFE OF 

whiles a dike-louper at a time, is it for you, who are his 
goldsmith, and to whom, I doubt, he awes an uncomata- 
ble sum, to cast that up to him ? ' 

Assuredly there is no undue favouring of 
Stuarts in such a picture as that. 

Scott's humour is, I think, of very different 
qualities in relation to different subjects. Cer- 
tainly he was at times capable of considerable 
heaviness of hand, — of the Scotch ' wut ' which 
has been so irreverently treated by English 
critics. His rather elaborate jocular introduc- 
tions, under the name of Jedediah Cleish- 
botham, are clearly laborious at times. And 
even his own letters to his daughter-in-law, 
which Mr. Lockhart seems to regard as models 
of tender playfulness and pleasantry, seem to 
me decidedly elephantine. Not unfrequently, 
too, his stereotyped jokes weary. Dalgetty 
bores you almost as much as he would do in real 
life, — which is a great fault in art. Bradward- 
ine becomes a nuisance, and as for Sir Piercie 
Shafton, he is beyond endurance. Like some 
other Scotchmen of genius, Scott twanged 
away at any effective chord till it more than 
lost its expressiveness. But in dry humour, 
and in that higher humour which skilfully 
blends the ludicrous and the pathetic, so that it 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 223 

is hardly possible to separate between smiles 
and tears, Scott is a master. His canny inn- 
keeper, who, having sent away all the pease- 
meal to the camp of the Covenanters, and all 
the oatmeal (with deep professions of duty) to 
the castle and its cavaliers, in compliance with 
the requisitions sent to him on each side, ad- 
mits with a sigh to his daughter that ' they 
maun gar wheat flour serve themsels for a 
blink ' — his firm of solicitors, Greenhorn and 
Grinderson, whose senior partner writes re- 
spectfully to clients in prosperity, and whose 
junior partner writes familiarly to those in ad- 
versity, — his arbitrary nabob who asks how the 
devil any one should be able to mix spices so 
well ' as one who has been where they grow ' ; 
— his little ragamuffin who indignantlj'' denies 
that he has broken his promise not to gamble 
away his sixpences at pitch-and-toss because 
he has gambled them away at ' neevie- 
neevie-nick-nack,' — and similar figures abound 
in his tales, — are all creations which make 
one laugh inwardly as we read. But he 
has a much higher humour still, that in- 
imitable power of shading off ignorance 
into knowledge and simplicity into wisdom, 
which makes his picture of Jeanie Deans, 



224. LIFE OF 

for instance, so humorous as well as so affect- 
ing. When Jeanie reunites her father to her 
husband by reminding the former how it would 
sometimes happen that ' twa precious saints 
might pu' sundrywise like twa cows riving at 
the same hayband,' she gives us an admirable 
instance of Scott's higher humour. Or take 
Jeanie Deans's letter to her father communi- 
cating to him the pardon of his daughter and 
her own interview with the queen : — 

Dearest and truly honoured Father — This 
comes with my duty to inform j'^ou, that it has pleased 
God to redeem that captivitie of my poor sister, in 
respect the Queen's blessed Majesty, for whom we are 
ever bound to pray, hath redeemed her soul from the 
slayer, granting tlie ransom of her, whilk is ane pardon 
or reprieve. And I spoke with the Queen face to face, 
and yet live; for she is not muckle differing from other 
grand leddies, saving that she has a stately presence, 
and een like a blue huntin' hawk's, whilk gaed throu' and 
throu' me like a Highland durk — And all this good was, 
alway under the Great Giver, to whom all are but instru- 
ments, wrought for us by the Duk of Argile, wha is ane 
native true-hearted Scotsman, and not pridefu', like 
other folk we ken of — and likewise skeely enow in 
bestial, whereof he has promised to gie me twa Devon- 
shire kye, of which he is enamoured, although I do still 
hand by the real hawkit Airshire breed — and I have 
promised him a cheese; and I wad wuss ye, if Gowans, 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 225 

the brockit cow, has a quey, that she suld suck her fill 
of milk, as I am given to understand he has none of that 
breed, and is not scornfu' but will take a thing frae a 
l^uir body, that it may lighten their heart of the loading 
of debt that they awe him. Also his honour the Duke 
will accept ane of our Dunlop cheeses, and it sail be 
my faut if a better was ever yearned in Lowden. 
[Here follow some observations respecting the breed of 
cattle, and the produce of the dairy, which it is our in- 
tention to forward to the Board of Agriculture.] 
Nevertheless, these are but matters of the after-har- 
vest, in respect of the great good which Providence hath 
gifted us with — and, in especial, poor Effie's life. And 
oh, my dear father, since it hath pleased God to be merci- 
ful to her, let her not want your free pardon, whilk will 
make her meet to be ane vessel of grace, and also a 
comfort to your ain graie hairs. Dear Father, will ye 
let the Laird ken that we have had friends strangely 
raised up to us, and that the talent whilk he lent me will 
be thankfully repaid. I hae some of it to the fore; and 
the rest of it is not knotted up in ane purse or napkin, 
but in ane wee bit paper, as is the fashion heir, whilk 
I am assured is gude for the siller. And, dear father, 
through Mr. Butler's means I hae gude friendship with 
the Duke, for there had been kindness between their for- 
bears in the auld troublesome time byepast. And Mrs. 
Glass has been kind like my very mother. She has a 
braw house here, and lives bien and warm, wi' twa serv- 
ant lasses, and a man and a callant in the shop. And 
she is to send you doun a pound of her hie-dried, and 
some other tobaka, and we maun think of some propine 



226 • LIFE OF 

for her, since her kindness hath been great. And the 
Duk is to send the pardon doun by an express mes- 
senger, in respect that I canna travel sae fast; and I 
am to come domi wi 'twa of his Honour's servants — 
that is, John Archibald, a decent elderly gentleman, that 
says he has seen you lang syne, when ye were buying 
beasts in the west frae the Laird of Aughterrauggitie — 
but maybe ye winna mind him — ony way, he's a civil man 
— and Mrs. Dolly Button, that is to be dairy-maid at 
Inverara: and they bring me on as far as Glasgo', whilk 
will make it nae pinch to win hame, whilk I desire of 
all things. May the Giver of all good things keep ye in 
your outgauns and incomings, whereof devoutlj'^ prayeth 
your loving dauter, 

Jean Deans. 

This contains an example of Scott's rather 
heavy jocularity as well as giving us a fine 
illustration of his highest and deepest and 
sunniest humour. Coming where it does, the 
joke inserted about the Board of Agriculture 
is rather like the gambol of a rhinoceros trying 
to imitate the curvettings of a thoroughbred 
horse. 

Some of the finest touches of his humour are 
no doubt much heightened by his perfect com- 
mand of genius as well as the dialect of a 
peasantry, in whom a true culture of mind and 
sometimes also of heart is found in the closest 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 227 

possible contact with the humblest pursuits and 
the quaintest enthusiasm for them. But Scott, 
with all his turn for irony — and Mr. Lockhart 
says that even on his death-bed he used towards 
his children the same sort of good-humored 
irony to which he had always accustomed them 
in his life — certainly never gives us any ex- 
ample of that highest irony which is found so 
frequently in Shakespeare, which touches the 
paradoxes of the spiritual life of the children 
of earth, and which reached its highest point in 
Isaiah. Now and then in his latest diaries — the 
diaries written in his deep affliction — he comes 
near the edge of it. Once, for instance, he 
says, * What a strange scene if the surge of 
conversation could suddenly ebb like the tide, 
and show us the state of people's minds ! 

* " No eyes the rocks discover 
Which lurk beneath the deep." 

Life could not be endured were it seen in real- 
ity.' But this is not irony, only the sort of 
meditation which, in a mind inclined to thrust 
deep into the secrets of life's paradoxes, is apt 
to lead to irony. Scott, however, does not 
thrust deep in this direction. He met the cold 
steel which inflicts the deepest interior wounds. 



228 LIFE OF 

like a soldier, and never seems to have medi- 
tated on the higher paradoxes of life till reason 
reeled. The irony of Hamlet is far from 
Scott. His imagination was essentially one of 
distinct embodiment. He never even seemed 
so much as to contemplate that sundering of 
substance and form, that rending away of out- 
ward garments, that unclothing of the soul, in 
order that it might be more effectually clothed 
upon, which is at the heart of anything that 
may be called spiritual irony. The constant 
abiding of his mind within the well-defined 
forms of some one or other of the conditions 
of outward life and manners, among the scores 
of different spheres of humble habit, was, no 
doubt, one of the secrets of his genius; but it 
was also its greatest limitation. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 229 



CHAPTER XI 

MORALITY AND RELIGION 

^^^!^HE very same causes which limited 
M J Scott's humour and irony to the com- 
^■^ moner fields of experience, and pre- 
vented him from ever introducing into his sto- 
ries characters of the highest type of moral 
thoughtfulness, gave to his own morality and 
religion, which were, I think, true to the core 
so far as they went, a shade of distinct conven- 
tionality. It is no doubt quite true, as he him- 
self tells us, that he took more interest in his 
mercenaries and moss-troopers, outlaws, gip- 
sies, and beggars, than he did in the fine ladies 
and gentlemen under a cloud whom he adopted 
as heroines and heroes. But that was the very 
sign of his conventionalism. Though he inter- 
ested himself more in these irregular persons, 
he hardly ever ventured to paint their inner life 
so as to show how little there was to choose be- 
tween the sins of those who are at war with so- 
ciety and the sins of those who bend to the yoke 



230 LIFE OF 

of society. He widened rather than narrowed 
the chasm between the outlaw and the respect- 
able citizen, even while he did not disguise his 
own romantic interest in the former. He ex- 
tenuated, no doubt, the sins of all brave and 
violent defiers of the law, as distinguished from 
the sins of crafty and cunning abusers of the 
law. But the leaning he had to the former was, 
as he was willing to admit, what he regarded as 
a ' naughty ' leaning. He did not attempt for 
a moment to balance accounts between them and 
society. He paid his tribute as a matter of 
course to the established morality, and only put 
in a word or two by way of attempt to diminish 
the severity of the sentence on the bold trans- 
gressor. And then, where what is called the 
* law of honour ' comes in to traverse the law 
of religion, he had no scruple in setting aside 
the latter in favour of the customs of gentle- 
men, without any attempt to justify that 
course. Yet it is evident from various passages 
in his writings that he held Christian duty in- 
consistent with duelling, and that he held him- 
self a sincere Christian. In spite of this, when 
he was fifty-six, and under no conceivable 
hurry or perturbation of feeling, but only con- 
cerned to defend his own conduct — which was 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 231 

indeed plainly right — as to a political disclo- 
sure which he had made in his life of Napoleon, 
he asked his old friend William Clerk to be his 
second, if the expected challenge from General 
Gourgaud should come, and declared his firm 
intention of accepting it. On the strength of 
official evidence he had exposed some conduct 
of General Gourgaud's at St. Helena, which 
appeared to be far from honourable, and he 
thought it his duty on that account to submit 
to be shot at by General Gourgaud, if General 
Gourgaud had wished it. In writing to Wil- 
liam Clerk to ask him to be his second, he says, 
' Like a man who finds himself in a scrape. 
General Gourgaud may wish to fight himself 
out of it, and if the quarrel should be thrust 
on me, why, I will not baulk him^ Jackie. He 
shall not dishonour the country through my 
sides, I can assure him.' In other words, Scott 
acted just as he had made Waverley and others 
of his heroes act, on a code of honour which he 
knew to be false, and he must have felt in this 
case to be something worse. He thought him- 
self at that time under the most stringent obli- 
gations both to his creditors and his children, 
to do all in his power to redeem himself and his 
estate from debt. Nay, more, he held that his 



232 LIFE OF 

life was a trust from his Creator, which he had 
no right to throw away merely because a man 
whom he had not really injured was indulging 
a strong wish to injure him; but he could so 
little brook the imputation of physical coward- 
ice, that he was moral coward enough to resolve 
to meet General Gourgaud, if General Gour- 
gaud lusted after a shot at him. Nor is there 
any trace preserved of so much as a moral 
scruple in his own mind on the subject, and 
this though there are clear traces in his other 
writings as to what he thought Christian mor- 
ality required. But the Border chivalry was so 
strong in Scott that, on subjects of this kind 
at least, his morality was the conventional mor- 
ality of a day rapidly passing away. 

He showed the same conventional feeling in 
his severity towards one of his own brothers 
who had been guilty of cowardice. Daniel 
Scott was the black sheep of the family. He 
got into difficulties in business, formed a bad 
connexion with an artful woman, and was sent 
to try his fortunes in the West Indies. There 
he was employed in some service against a body 
of refractory negroes — we do not kpow its 
exact nature — and apparently showed the 
white feather. Mr. Lockhart says that ' he 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 233 

returned to Scotland a dishonoured man; and 
though he found shelter and compassion from 
his mother, his brother would never see him 
again. Nay, when, soon after, his health, shat- 
tered by dissolute indulgence, . . . gave 
way altogether, and he died, as yet a young 
man, the poet refused either to attend his 
funeral or to wear mourning for him, like the 
rest of his family.' ^ Indeed he always spoke 
of him as his ' relative,' not as his brother. Here 
again Scott's severity was due to his brother's 
failure as a ' man of honour,' i. e. in courage. 
He was forbearing enough with vices of a dif- 
ferent kind; made John Ballantyne's dissipa- 
tion the object rather of his jokes than of his 
indignation ; and not only mourned for him, but 
really grieved for him when he died. It is only 
fair to say, however, that for this conventional 
scorn of a weakness rather than a sin, Scott 
sorrowed sincerely later in life, and that in 
sketching the physical cowardice of Connochar 
in The Fair Maid of Perth, he deliberately 
made an attempt to atone for this hardness 
towards his brother by showing how frequently 
the foundation of cowardice may be laid in per- 
fectly involuntary physical temperament, and 
1 Lockhart's Life of Scott, iii. 198-9. 



234 LIFE OF 

pointing out with what noble elements of dis- 
position it may be combined. But till reflection 
on many forms of human character had en- 
larged Scott's charity, and perhaps also the 
range of his speculative ethics, he remained a 
conventional moralist, and one, moreover, the 
type of whose conventional code was borrowed 
more from that of honour than from that of 
religious principle. There is one curious j)as- 
sage in his diary, written very near the end of 
his life, in which Scott even seems to declare 
that conventional standards of conduct are bet- 
ter, or at least safer, than religious standards 
of conduct. He says in his diary for the 15th 
April, 1828,— 'Dined with Sir Robert Inghs, 
and met Sir Thomas Acland, my old and kind 
friend. I was happy to see him. He may be 
considered now as the head of the religious 
party in the House of Commons — a powerful 
body which Wilberforce long commanded. It 
is a difficult situation, for the adaptation of re- 
ligious motives to earthly policy is apt — among 
the infinite delusions of the human heart — to 
be a snare.' ^ His letters to his eldest son, the 
young cavalry officer, on his first start in life, 
are much admired by Mr. Lockhart, but to me 

2 Lockhart's Life of Scott, ix. 231. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 235 

they read a little hard, a little worldly, and ex- 
tremely conventional. Conventionality was 
certainly to his mind almost a virtue. 

Of enthusiasm in religion Scott always spoke 
very severely, both in his novels and in his let- 
ters and private diary. In writing to Lord 
Montague, he speaks of such enthusiasm as 
was then prevalent at Oxford, and which 
makes, he says, ' religion a motive and a pretext 
for particular lines of thinking in politics and 
in temporal affairs ' [as if it could help doing 
that !] as ' teaching a new way of going to the 
devil for God's sake,' and this expressly, be- 
cause when the young are infected with it, it 
disunites families, and sets ' children in opposi- 
tion to their parents.' ^ He gives us, however, 
one reason for his dread of anything like enthu- 
siasm, which is not conventional ; — that it inter- 
feres with the submissive and tranquil mood 
which is the only true religious mood. Speak- 
ing in his diary of a weakness and fluttering at 
the heart, from which he had suffered, he says, 
' It is an awful sensation, and would have made 
an enthusiast of me, had I indulged my imagi- 
nation on rehgious subjects. I have been 
always careful to place my mind in the most 

2 Lockhart's Life of Scott, vii. 255-6. 



236 LIFE OF 

tranquil posture which it can assume, during 
my private exercises of devotion.' * And in 
this avoidance of indulging the imagination on 
religious, or even spiritual subjects, Scott goes 
far beyond Shakespeare. I do not think there 
is a single study in all his romances of what 
may be fairly called a pre-eminently spiritual 
character as such, though Jeanie Deans ap- 
proaches nearest to it. The same may be said 
of Shakespeare. But Shakespeare, though he 
has never drawn a pre-eminently spiritual char- 
acter, often enough indulged his imagination 
while meditating on spiritual themes. 
* Lockhart's Life of Scott, viii. 292. 



SIR AV ALTER SCOTT 237 



CHAPTER XII 

DISTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS AT 
ABBOTSrORD 



© 



ETWEEN 1814 and the end of 1825, 
Scott's literary labour was interrupted 
only by one serious illness, and hardly 
interrupted by that, — by a few journeys, — one 
to Paris after the battle of Waterloo, and sev- 
eral to London, — and by the worry of a con- 
stant stream of intrusive visitors. Of his jour- 
neys he has left some records ; but I cannot say 
that I think Scott would ever have reached, as 
a mere observer and recorder, at all the high 
point which he reached directly his imagination 
went to work to create a story. That imagina- 
tion was, indeed, far less subservient to his mere 
perceptions than to his constructive powers. 
P mil's Letters to his Kinsfolk — the records of 
his Paris journey after Waterloo — for in- 
stance, are not at all above the mark of a good 
special correspondent. His imagination was 
less the imagination of insight, than the imagi- 



238 LIFE OF 

nation of one whose mind was a great kaleido- 
scope of human life and fortunes. But far 
more interrupting than either illness or travel, 
was the lion-hunting of which Scott became 
the object, directly after the publication of the 
earlier novels. In great measure, no doubt, on 
account of the mystery as to his authorship, 
his fame became something oppressive. At 
one time as many as sixteen parties of visitors 
applied to see Abbots ford in a single day. 
Strangers, — especially the American travellers 
of that day, who were much less reticent and 
more irrepressible than the American travellers 
of this, — would come to him without introduc- 
tions, facetiously cry out ' Prodigious ! ' in imi- 
tation of Dominie Sampson, whatever they 
were shown, inquire whether the new house was 
called Tullyveolan or Tillytudlem, cross-exam- 
ine, with open note-books, as to Scott's age, and 
the age of his wife, and appear to be taken 
quite by surprise when they were bowed out 
without being asked to dine.* In those days of 
high postage Scott's bill for letters ' seldom 
came under 150/. a year,' and * as to coach par- 
cels, they were a perfect ruination.' On one 
occasion a mighty package came by post from 
^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, v. 387. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 239 

the United States, for which Scott had to pay 
five pounds sterhng. It contained a MS. play 
called Tlie Cherokee Lovers, by a young lady 
of New York, who begged Scott to read and 
correct it, write a prologue and epilogue, get 
it put on the stage at Drury Lane, and nego- 
tiate with Constable or Murraj^ for the copy- 
right. In about a fortnight another packet not 
less formidable arrived, charged with a similar 
postage, which Scott, not grown cautious 
through experience, recklessly opened; out 
jumped a duplicate copy of The Cherokee 
Lovers, with a second letter from the authoress, 
stating that as the weather had been stormy, 
and she feared that something might have hap- 
pened to her former MS., she had thought it 
prudent to send him a duplicate.^ Of course, 
when fame reached such a point as this, it be- 
came both a worry and a serious waste of 
money, and what was far more valuable than 
money, of time, privacy, and tranquillity of 
mind. And though no man ever bore such wor- 
ries with the equanimity of Scott, no man ever 
received less pleasure from the adulation of un- 
known and often vulgar and ignorant ad- 
mirers. His real amusements were his trees 

2 Lockhart's Life of Scott, v. 382. 



240 LIFE OF 

and his friends. ' Planting and pruning trees,' 
he said, ' I could work at from morning to 
night. There is a sort of self-congratulation, 
a little tickling self -flattery, in the idea that 
while you are pleasing and amusing yourself, 
you are seriously contributing to the future 
welfare of the country, and that your very 
acorn may send its future ribs of oak to future 
victories like Trafalgar,' ^ — for the day of iron 
ships was not yet. And again, at a later stage 
of his planting: — ' You can have no idea of the 
exquisite delight of a planter, — he is like a 
painter laying on his colours, — at every mo- 
ment he sees his effects coming out. There is 
no art or occupation comparable to this; it is 
full of past, present, and future enjoyment. 
I look back to the time when there was not a 
tree here, only bare heath ; I look round and see 
thousands of trees growing up, all of which, I 
may say almost each of which, have received 
my personal attention. I remember, five years 
ago, looking forward with the most delighted 
expectation to this very hour, and as each year 
has passed, the expectation has gone on increas- 
ing. I do the same now. I anticipate what 
this plantation and that one will presently be, 

^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, iii. 288. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 241 

if only taken care of, and there is not a spot of 
which I do not watch the progress. UnHke 
building, or even painting, or indeed anj^ other 
kind of pursuit, this has no end, and is never 
interrupted ; but goes on from day to day, and 
from year to year, with a perpetually augment- 
ing interest. Farming I hate. What have I 
to do with fattening and killing beasts, or rais- 
ing corn, only to cut it down, and to wrangle 
with farmers about prices, and to be constantly 
at the mercy of the seasons? There can be no 
such disappointments or annoyances in plant- 
ing trees.' * Scott indeed regarded planting as 
a, mode of so moulding the form and colour of 
the outward world, that Nature herself became 
indebted to him for finer outlines, richer masses 
of colour, and deeper shadows, as well as for 
more fertile and sheltered soils. And he was 
as skilful in producing the last result, as he was 
in the artistic effects of his planting. In the 
essay on the planting of waste lands, he men- 
tions a story, — drawn from his own experience, 
• — of a planter, who, having scooped out the 
lowest part of his land for enclosures, and 
' planted the wood round them in masses en- 
larged or contracted as the natural lying of the 

4 Lockhart's Life of Scott, vii. 287-8. 



242 LIFE OF 

ground seemed to dictate,' met, six years after 
these changes, his former tenant on the ground, 

and said to him, ' I suppose, Mr. R , you 

will say I have ruined your farm by laying half 
of it into woodland ? ' 'I should have expected 

it, sir,' answered Mr. R , ' if you had told 

me beforehand what you were going to do; 
but I am now of a very different opinion; and 
as I am looking for land at present, if you are 
inclined to take for the remaining sixty acres 
the same rent which I formerly gave for a hun- 
dred and twenty, I will give you an offer to 
that amount. I consider the benefit of the en- 
closing, and the complete shelter afforded to 
the fields, as an advantage which fairly coun- 
terbalances the loss of one-half of the land.* ^ 
And Scott was not only thoughtful in his 
own planting, but induced his neighbours to 
become so too. So great was their regard for 
him, that many of them planted their estates 
as much with reference to the effect which their 
plantations would have on the view from Ab- 
botsford, as with reference to the effect they 
would have on the view from their own 
grounds. Many was the consultation which he 
and his neighbours, Scott of Gala, for instance, 

^ Scott's Miscellaneous Prose Works, xxi. 22-3. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 243 

and Mr. Henderson of Eildon Hall, had 
together on the effect which would be produced 
on the view from their respective houses, of the 
planting going on upon the lands of each. The 
reciprocity of feeling was such that the various 
proprietors acted more like brothers in this 
matter, than like the jealous and exclusive crea- 
tures which landowners, as such, so often are. 

Next to his interest in the management and 
growth of his own little estate was Scott's in- 
terest in the management and growth of the 
Duke of Buccleuch's. To the Duke he looked 
up as the head of his clan, with something 
almost more than a feudal attachment, greatly 
enhanced of course by the personal friendship 
which he had formed for him in early life as 
the Earl of Dalkeith. This mixture of feudal 
and personal feeling towards the Duke and 
Duchess of Buccleuch continued during their 
lives. Scott was away on a yachting tour to 
the Shetlands and Orkneys in July and August, 
1814, and it was during this absence that the 
Duchess of Buccleuch died. Scott, who was in 
no anxiety about her, employed himself in writ- 
ing an amusing descriptive epistle to the Duke 
in rough verse, chronicling his voyage, and 
containing expressions of the prof oundest rev- 



244. LIFE OF 

erence for the goodness and charity of the 
Duchess, a letter which did not reach its desti- 
nation till after the Duchess's death. Scott 
himself heard of her death by chance when thej^ 
landed for a few hours on the coast of Ireland ; 
he was quite overpowered by the news, and 
went to bed only to drop into short nightmare 
sleeps, and to wake with the dim memory of 
some heavy weight at his heart. The Duke 
himself died five years later, leaving a son only 
thirteen years of age (the present Duke) , over 
whose interests, both as regarded his education 
and his estates, Scott watched as jealously as 
if they had been those of his own son. Many 
were the anxious letters he wrote to Lord Mon- 
tague as to his * young chief's ' affairs, as he 
called them, and great his pride in watching 
the promise of his youth. Nothing can be 
clearer than that to Scott the feudal principle 
was something far beyond a name ; that he had 
at least as much pride in his devotion to his 
chief, as he had in founding a house which he 
believed would increase the influence — both 
territorial and personal — of the clan of Scotts. 
The unaffected reverence which he felt for the 
Duke, though mingled with warm personal 
affection, showed that Scott's feudal feehng 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 245 

had something real and substantial in it, which 
did not vanish even when it came into close con- 
tact with strong personal feelings. This rev- 
erence is curiously marked in his letters. He 
speaks of ' the distinction of rank ' being 
ignored by both sides, as of something quite 
exceptional, but it was never really ignored by 
him, for though he continued to write to the 
Duke as an intimate friend, it was with a min- 
gling of awe, very different indeed from that 
which he ever adopted to Ellis or Erskine. It 
is necessary to remember this, not only in esti- 
mating the strength of feeling which made him 
so anxious to become himself the founder of a 
house within a house, — of a new branch of the 
clan of Scotts, — but in estimating the loyalty 
which Scott always dispayed to one of the least 
respectable of English sovereigns, George IV., 
— a matter of which I must now say a few 
words, not only because it led to Scott's receiv- 
ing the baronetcy, but. because it forms to my 
mind the most grotesque of all the threads in 
the lot of this strong and proud man. 



246 LIFE OF 




CHAPTER XIII 

SCOTT AND GEORGE IV. 

'HE first relations of Scott with the 
Court were, oddly enough, formed 
with the Princess, not with the Prince 
of Wales. In 1806 Scott dined with the Prin- 
cess of Wales at Blackheath, and spoke of his 
invitation as a great honour. He wrote a trib- 
ute to her father, the Duke of Brunswick, in 
the introduction to one of the cantos of Mar- 
mion„ and received from the Princess a silver 
vase in acknowledgment of this passage in the 
poem. Scott's relations with the Prince Re- 
gent seem to have begun in an offer to Scott of 
the Lain-eateship in the summer of 1813, an 
offer which Scott would have found it very 
difficult to accept, so strongly did his pride re- 
volt at the idea of having to commemorate in 
verse, as an official duty, all conspicuous inci- 
dents affecting the throne. But he was at the 
time of the offer in the thick of his first diffi- 
culties on account of Messrs. John Ballantyne 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 247 

and Co., and it was only the Duke of Buc- 
cleuch's guarantee of 4000Z. — a guarantee sub- 
sequently cancelled by Scott's paying the sum 
for which it was a security — that enabled him 
at this time to decline what, after Southey had 
accepted it, he compared in a letter to Southey 
to the herring for which the poor Scotch cler- 
gyman gave thanks in a grace wherein he de- 
scribed it as * even this, the very least of Provi- 
dence's mercies.' In March, 1815, Scott being 
then in London, the Prince Regent asked him 
to dinner, addressed him uniformly as Walter, 
and struck up a friendship with him which 
seems to have lasted their lives, and which cer- 
tainly did much more honour to George than 
to Sir Walter Scott. It is impossible not to 
think rather better of George IV. for thus 
valuing, and doing his best in every way to 
show his value for, Scott. It is equally impos- 
sible not to think rather worse of Scott for thus 
valuing, and in every way doing his best to ex- 
press his value for, this very worthless, though 
by no means incapable king. The consequences 
were soon seen in the indignation with which 
Scott began to speak of the Princess of 
Wales's sins. In 1806, in the squib he wrote on 
Lord Melville's acquittal, when impeached for 



g48 LIFE OF 

corruption by the Liberal Government, he had 
written thus of the Princess Carohne: — 

' Our King, too — our Princess, — I dare not say more, 
sir, — 
May Providence watch them with mercy and might! 
While there's one Scottish hand that can wag a clay- 
more, sir. 
They shall ne'er want a friend to stand up for their 
right. 

Be damn'd he that dare not — 
For my part I'll spare not 
To beauty afflicted a tribute to give; 
Fill it up steadily. 
Drink it off readily. 
Here's to the Princess, and long may she live.' 

But whoever ' stood up ' for the Princess's 
right, certainly Scott did not do so after his 
intimacy with the Prince Regent began. He 
mentioned her only with severity, and in one 
letter at least, written to his brother, with some- 
thing much coarser than severity ; ^ but the 
king's similar vices did not at all alienate him 
from what at least had all the appearance of a 
deep personal devotion to his sovereign. The 
first baronet whom George IV. made on suc- 
ceeding to the throne, after his long Regency, 

1 Lockhart's Life of Scott, vi. 229-30. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 249 

was Scott, who not only accepted the honour 
gratefully, but dwelt with extreme pride on 
the fact that it was offered to him by the king 
himself, and was in no way due to the prompt- 
ing of any minister's advice. He wrote to 
Joanna BaiUie on hearing of the Regent's in- 
tention — for the offer was made by the Regent 
at the end of 1818, though it was not actually 
conferred till after George's accession, namely, 
on the 30th March, 1820,—' The Duke of Buc- 
cleuch and Scott of Harden, who, as the heads 
of my clan and the sources of my gentry, are 
good judges of what I ought to do, have both 
given me their earnest opinion to accept of an 
honour directly derived from the source of 
honour, and neither begged nor bought, as is 
the usual fashion. Several of my ancestors 
bore the title in the seventeenth century, and, 
were it of consequence, I have no reason to be 
ashamed of the decent and respectable persons 
who connect me with that period when they 
earned into the field, like Madoc, 

' " The Crescent at whose gleam the Cambrian oft, 
Cursing his perilous tenure, wound his horn," 

SO that, as a gentleman, I may stand on as good 
a footing as other new creations.' " Why the 

2 Lockhart's Life of Scott, vi. 13, 11, 



250 LIFE OF 

honour was any greater for coining from such 
a king as George, than it would have been if it 
had been suggested by Lord Sidmouth, or even 
Lord Liverpool, — or half as great as if Mr. 
Canning had proposed it, it is not easy to con- 
ceive. George was a fair judge of literary 
merit, but not 'one to be compared for a mo- 
ment with that great orator and wit ; and as to 
his being the fountain of honour, there was so 
much dishonour of which the king was certainly 
the fountain, too, that I do not think it was very 
easy for two fountains both springing from 
such a person to have flowed quite unmingled. 
George justly prided himself on Sir Walter 
Scott's having been the first creation of his 
reign, and I think the event showed that the 
poet was the fountain of much more honour 
for the king, than the king was for the poet. 

When George came to Edinburgh in 1822, 
it was Sir Walter who acted virtually as the 
master of the ceremonies, and to whom it was 
chiefly due that the visit was so successful. It 
was then that George clad his substantial per- 
son for the first time in the Highland costume 
— to wit, in the Steuart Tartans— and was so 
much annoyed to find himself outvied by a 
wealthy alderman, Sir William Curtis, who 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 251 

had gone and done likewise, and, in his equally 
grand Steuart Tartans, seemed a kind of 
parody of the king. The day on which the 
king arrived, Tuesday, 14th of August, 1822, 
was also the day on which Scott's most intimate 
friend, William Erskine, then Eord Kinned- 
der, died. Yet Scott went on board the royal 
yacht, was most graciously received by George, 
had his health drunk by the king in a bottle of 
Highland whiskey, and with a proper show of 
devoted loyalty entreated to be allowed to re- 
tain the glass out of which his Majesty had 
just drunk his health. The request was gra- 
ciously acceded to, but let it be pleaded on 
Scott's behalf, that on reaching home and find- 
ing there his friend Crabbe the poet, he sat 
down on the royal gift, and crushed it to atoms. 
One would hope that he was really thinking 
more even of Crabbe, and much more of Ers- 
kine, than of the royal favour for which he had 
appeared, and doubtless had really believed 
himself, so grateful. Sir Walter retained his 
regard for the king, such as it was, to the last, 
and even persuaded himself that George's 
death would be a great political calamity for 
the nation. And really I cannot help thinking 
that Scott believed more in the king, than he 



252 LIFE OF 

did in his friend George Canning. Assuredly, 
greatly as he admired Canning, he condemned 
him more and more as Canning grew more lib- 
eral, and sometimes speaks of his veerings in 
that direction with positive asperity. George, 
on the other hand, who believed more in num- 
ber one than in any other number, however 
large, became much more conservative after he 
became Regent than he was before, and as he 
grew more conservative Scott grew more con- 
servative likewise, till he came to think this par- 
ticular king almost a pillar of the Constitution. 
I suppose we ought to explainthis little bit of 
fetish-worship in Scott much as we should the 
quaint practical adhesion to duelling which he 
gave as an old man, who had had all his life 
much more to do with the pen than the sword — 
that is, as an evidence of the tendency of an im- 
proved type to recur to that of the old wild 
stock on which it had been grafted. But cer- 
tainly no feudal devotion of his ancestors to 
their chief was ever less justified by moral qual- 
ities than Scott's loyal devotion to the fountain 
of honour as embodied in ' our fat friend.' 
The whole relation to George was a grotesque 
thread in Scott's life; and I cannot quite for- 
give him for the utterly conventional severity 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 253 

with which he threw over his first patron, the 
Queen, for sins which were certainly not 
grosser, if they were not much less gross, than 
those of his second patron, the husband who 
had set her the example which she faithfully, 
though at a distance, followed. 




254 LIFE OF 

CHAPTER XIV 

SCOTT AS A POLITICIAN 

'COTT usually professed great ignor- 
ance of politics, and did what he could 
to hold aloof from a world in which his 
feelings were very easily heated, while his 
knowledge was apt to be very imperfect. But 
now and again, and notably towards the close 
of his life, he got himself mixed up in politics, 
and I need hardly say that it was always on the 
Tory, and generally on the red-hot Tory, side. 
His first hasty intervention in politics was the 
song I have just referred to on Lord Melville's 
acquittal, during the short Whig administra- 
tion of 1806. In fact Scott's comparative ab- 
stinence from politics was due, I believe, chiefly 
to the fact that during almost the whole of his 
literary life, Tories and not Whigs were in 
power. No sooner was any reform proposed, 
any abuse threatened, than Scott's eager Con- 
servative spirit flashed up. Proposals were 
made in 1806 for changes — and, as it was 
thought, reforms — ^in the Scotch Courts of 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 255 

Law, and Scott immediately saw something 
like national calamity in the prospect. The 
mild proposals in question were discussed at a 
meeting of the Faculty of Advocates, when 
Scott made a speech longer than he had ever 
before delivered, and animated by a ' flow and 
energy of eloquence ' for which those who were 
accustomed to hear his debating speeches were 
quite unprepared. He walked home between 
two of the reformers, Mr. Jeffrey and another, 
when his companions began to compliment him 
on his eloquence, and to speak playfully of its 
subject. But Scott was in no mood for play- 
fulness. ' No, no,' he exclaimed, ' 'tis no laugh- 
ing matter ; little by little, whatever your wishes 
may be, you will destroy and undermine, until 
nothing of what makes Scotland Scotland shall 
remain ! ' ' And so saying,' adds Mr. Lock- 
hart, ' he turned round to conceal his agitation, 
but not until Mr. Jeffrey saw tears gushing 
down his cheek, — resting his head, until he re- 
covered himself, on the wall of the Mound.' * 
It was the same strong feeling for old Scotch 
institutions which broke out so quaintly in the 
midst of his own worst troubles in 1826, on be- 
half of the Scotch banking-system, when he 

^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, ii. 328. 



256 LIFE OF 

so eloquently defended, in the letters of Mala- 
chi Malagrowther, what would now be called 
Home-Rule for Scotland, and indeed really 
defeated the attempt of his friends the Tories, 
who were the innovators this time, to encroach 
on those sacred institutions — the Scotch one- 
pound note, and the private-note circulation of 
the Scotch banks. But when I speak of Scott 
as a Home-Ruler, I should add that had not 
Scotland been for generations governed to a 
great extent, and, as he thought successfully, 
by Home-Rule, he was far too good a Con- 
servative to have apologized for it at all. The 
basis of his Conservatism was always the dan- 
ger of undermining a system which had an- 
swered so well. In the concluding passages of 
the letters to which I have just referred, he con- 
trasts ' Theory, a scroll in her hand, full of 
deep and mysterious combinations of figures, 
the least failure in any one of which may alter 
the result entirely,' with ' a practical system 
successful for upwards of a century.' His 
vehement and unquailing opposition to Reform 
in almost the very last year of his life, when 
he had already suffered more than one stroke 
of paralysis, was grounded on precisely the 
same argument. At Jedburgh, on the 21st 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 257 

March, 1831, he appeared in the midst of an 
angry population (who hooted and jeered at 
him till he turned round fiercely ui3on them 
with the defiance, ' I regard your gabble no 
more than the geese on the green,') to urge 
the very same protest. ' We in this district,' he 
said, * are proud, and with reason, that the first 
chain-bridge was the work of a Scotchman. It 
still hangs where he erected it a pretty long 
time ago. The French heard of our invention, 
and determined to introduce it, but with great 
improvements and embellishments. A friend 
of my own saw the thing tried. It was on the 
Seine at Marly. The French chain-bridge 
looked lighter and airier than the prototype. 
Every Englishman present was disposed to 
confess that we had been beaten at our own 
trade. But by-and-by the gates were opened, 
and the multitude were to pass over. It began 
to swing rather formidably beneath the pres- 
sure of the good company ; and by the time the 
architect, who led the procession in great pomp 
and glory, reached the middle, the whole gave 
way, and he — worthy, patriotic artist — was the 
first that got a ducking. They had forgot the 
middle bolt, — or rather this ingenious person 
had conceived that to be a clumsy-looking f ea- 



258 LIFE OF 

ture, which might safely be dispensed with, 
while he put some invisible gimcrack of his 
own to supply its place.' ^ It is strange that 
Sir Walter did not see that this kind of criti- 
cism, so far as it applied at all to such an ex- 
periment as the Reform Bill, was even more in 
point as a rebuke to the rashness of the Scotch 
reformer who hung the first successful chain- 
bridge, than to the rashness of the French re- 
former of reform who devised an unsuccessful 
variation on it. The audacity of the first ex- 
periment was much the greater, though the 
competence of the person who made it was the 
greater also. And as a matter of fact, the 
political structure against the supposed inse- 
curity of which Sir Walter was protesting, with 
all the courage of that dauntless though dying 
nature, was made by one who understood his 
work at least as well as the Scotch architect. 
The tramp of the many multitudes who have 
passed over it has never yet made it to 'swing 
dangerously,' and Lord Russell in the fulness 
of his age was but yesterday rejoicing in what 
he had achieved, and even in what those have 
achieved who have altered his work in the same 
spirit in which he designed it. 

2 Lockhart's Life of Scott, x. 47. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 259 

But though Sir Walter persuaded himself 
that his Conservatism was all founded in legiti- 
mate distrust of reckless change, there is evi- 
dence, I think, that at times at least it was due 
to elements less noble. The least creditable in- 
cident in the story of his political life — which 
Mr. Lockhart, with his usual candour, did not 
conceal — was the bitterness with which he re- 
sented a most natural and reasonable Parlia- 
mentary opposition to an appointment which 
he had secured for his favourite brother, Tom. 
In 1810 Scott appointed his brother Tom, who 
had failed as a Writer to the Signet, to a place 
vacant under himself as Clerk of Session. He 
had not given him the best place vacant, be- 
cause he thought it his duty to appoint an offi- 
cial who had grown grey in the service, but he 
gave Tom Scott this man's place, which was 
worth about 2501. a year. In the meantime 
Tom Scott's affairs did not render it conven- 
ient for him to be come-at-able, and he ab- 
sented himself, while they were being settled, 
in the Isle of Man. Further, the Commission 
on the Scotch system of judicature almost im- 
mediately reported that his office was one of 
supererogation, and ought to be abolished; but, 
to soften the blow, they proposed to allow him 



260 LIFE OF 

a pension of 130/. per annum. This proposal 
was discussed with some natural jealousy 
in the House of Lords. Lord Lauderdale 
thought that when Tom Scott was appointed, 
it must have been pretty evident that the Com- 
mission would propose to abolish the office, and 
that the appointment therefore should not have 
been made. ' Mr. Thomas Scott,' he said, 
' would have 130/. for life as an indemnity for 
an office the duties of which he never had per- 
formed, while those clerks who had laboured 
for twenty years had no adequate remunera- 
tion.' Lord Holland supported this very rea- 
sonable and moderate view of the case ; but of 
course the Ministry carried their way, and Tom 
Scott got his unearned pension. Nevertheless, 
Scott was furious with Lord Holland. Writ- 
ing soon after to the happy recipient of this 
little pension, he says, ' Lord Holland has been 
in Edinburgh, and we met accidentally at a 
public party. He made up to me, but I re- 
membered his part in your affair, and cut him 
with as little remorse as an old pen.' Mr. Lock- 
hart says, on Lord- Jeffrey's authority, that 
the scene was a very painful one. Lord Jef- 
frey himself declared that it was the only rude- 
ness of which he ever saw Scott guilty in the 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 261 

course of a life-long familiarity. And it is 
pleasant to know that he renewed his cordiality 
with Lord Holland in later years, though there 
is no evidence that he ever admitted that he 
had been in the wrong. But the incident shows 
how very doubtful Sir Walter ought to have 
felt as to the purity of his Conservatism. It 
is quite certain that the proposal to abolish Tom 
Scott's office without compensation was not a 
reckless experiment of a fundamental kind. It 
was a mere attempt at diminishing the heavy 
burdens laid on the people for the advantage 
of a small portion of the middle class, and yet 
Scott resented it with as much display of sel- 
fish passion — considering his genuine nobility 
of breeding — as that with which the rude work- 
ing men of Jedburgh afterwards resented his 
gallant protest against the Reform Bill, and, 
later again, saluted the dauntless old man with 
the dastardly cry of ' Burk Sir Walter ! ' 
Judged truly, I think Sir Walter's conduct in 
cutting Lord Holland ' with as little remorse as 
an old pen,' for simply doing his duty in the 
House of Lords, was quite as ignoble in him as 
the bullying and insolence of the democratic 
party in 1831, when the dying lion made his 
last dash at what he regarded as the foes of the 



262 LIFE OF 

Constitution. Doubtless he held that the mob, 
or, as we more decorously say, the residuum, 
were in some sense the enemies of true free- 
dom. * I cannot read in history,' he writes 
once to Mr. Laidlaw, ' of any free State which 
has been brought to slavery till the rascal and 
uninstructed populace had had their short hour 
of anarchical government, which naturally 
leads to the stern repose of military despotism.' 
But he does not seem ever to have perceived 
that educated men identify themselves with 
' the rascal and uninstructed populace,' when- 
ever they indulge on behalf of the selfish inter- 
ests of their own class, passions such as he had 
indulged in fighting for his brother's pension. 
It is not the want of instruction, it is the rascal- 
dom, i. e. the violent esprit de corps of a selfish 
class, which ' naturally leads ' to violent reme- 
dies. Such rascaldom exists in all classes, and 
not least in the class of the cultivated and re- 
fined. Generous and magnanimous as Scott 
was, he was evidently by no means free from 
the germs of it. 

One more illustration of Scott's political 
Conservatism, and I may leave his political life, 
which was not indeed his strong side, though, 
as with all sides of Scott's nature, it had an 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 263 

energy and spirit all his own. On the subject 
of Catholic Emancipation he took a peculiar 
view. As he justly said, he hated bigotry, and 
would have left the Catholics quite alone, but 
for the great claims of their creed to interfere 
with political life. And even so, when the 
penal laws were once abolished, he would have 
abolished also the representative disabilities, as 
quite useless, as well as very irritating when the 
iron system of effective repression had ceased. 
But he disapproved of the abolition of the po- 
litical parts of the penal laws. He thought 
they would have stamped out Roman Cathol- 
icism; and whether that were just or unjust, 
he thought it would have been a great national 
service. ' As for Catholic Emancipation,' he 
wi'ote to Southey in 1807, ' I am not, God 
knows, a bigot in religious matters, nor a friend 
to persecution ; but if a particular set of relig- 
ionists are ipso facto connected with foreign 
politics, and placed under the spiritual direc- 
tion of a class of priests, whose unrivalled dex- 
terity and activity are increased by the rules 
which detach them from the rest of the world — 
I humbly think that we may be excused from 
entrusting to them those places in the State 
where the influence of such a clergy, who act 



264 LIFE OF 

under the direction of a passive tool of our 
worst foe, is likely to be attended with the most 
fatal consequences. If a gentleman chooses to 
walk about with a couple of pounds of gun- 
powder in his pocket, if I give him the shelter 
of my roof, I may at least be permitted to ex- 
clude him from the seat next to the fire.' ^ And 
in relation to the year 1825, when Scott visited 
Ireland, Mr. Lockhart writes, ' He on all oc- 
casions expressed manfully his belief that the 
best thing for Ireland would have been never 
to relax the strictly political enactments of the 
penal laws, however harsh tliese might appear. 
Had they been kept in vigour for another half- 
century, it was his conviction that Popery 
would have been all but extinguished in Ire- 
land. But he thought that after admitting Ro- 
manists to the elective franchise, it was a vain 
notion that they could be permanently or 
advantageously deterred from using that 
franchise in favour of those of their own 
persuasion.' 

In his diary in 1829 he puts the same view 
still more strongly: — ' I cannot get myself to 
feel at all anxious about the Catholic question. 
I cannot see the use of fighting about the plat- 

2 Lockhart's Life of Scott, iii. 34. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 265 

ter, when you have let them snatch the meat off 
it. I hold Popery to be such a mean and de- 
grading superstition, that I am not sure I could 
have found myself liberal enough for voting 
the repeal of the penal laws as they existed 
before 1780. They must and would, in course 
of time, have smothered Popery; and I con- 
fess that I should have seen the old lady of 
Babylon's mouth stopped with pleasure. But 
now that you have taken the plaster off her 
mouth, and given her free respiration, I cannot 
see the sense of keeping up the irritation about 
the claim to sit in Parliament. Unopposed, 
the Catholic superstition may sink into dust, 
with all its absurd ritual and solemnities. Still 
it is an awful risk. The world is in fact as silly 
as ever, and a good competence of nonsense 
will always find believers.' ^ That is the view 
of a strong and rather unscrupulous j)olitician 
— a moss-trooper in politics — which Scott cer- 
tainly was. He was thinking evidently very 
little of justice, almost entirely of the most 
effective means of keeping the Kingdom, the 
Kingdom which he loved. Had he understood 
— what none of the politicians of that day un- 
derstood — the strength of the Church of Rome 
* Lockhart's Life of Scott, ix. 305. 



266 LIFE OF 

as the only consistent exponent of the principle 
of Authority in religion, I believe his opposi- 
tion to Catholic emancipation would have been 
as bitter as his opposition to Parliamentary re- 
form. But he took for granted that while only 
' silly ' persons believed in Rome, and only ' in- 
fidels ' rejected an authoritative creed alto- 
gether, it was quite easy by the exercise of com- 
mon sense, to find the true compromise between 
reason and religious humility. Had Scott 
lived through the religious controversies of our 
own days, it seems not unlikely that with his 
vivid imagination, his warm Conservatism, and 
his rather inadequate critical powers, he might 
himself have become a Roman Catholic. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 267 



W 



CHAPTER XV 

SCOTT IN AD^rERSITY 

'ITH the year 1825 came a financial 
crisis, and Constable began to tremble 
for his solvency. From the date of his 
baronetcj^ Sir Walter had launched out into a 
considerable increase of expenditure. He got 
plans on a rather large scale in 1821 for the in- 
crease of Abbotsford, which were all carried 
out. To meet his expenses in this and other 
ways he received Constable's bills for ' four un- 
named works of fiction,' of which he had not 
written a line, but which came to exist in time, 
and were called Peveril of the Peak, Quentin 
Durward, St. Bonan's Well, and Redgaunt- 
let. Again, in the very year before the crash, 
1825, he married his eldest son, the heir to the 
title, to a young lady who was herself an heir- 
ess, Miss Jobson of Lochore, when Abbotsford 
and its estates were settled, with the reserve of 
10,000/., which Sir Walter took power to 
charge on the property for purposes of busi- 



268 LIFE OF 

ness. Immediately afterwards he purchased 
a captaincy in the King's Hussars for his son, 
which cost him 3500Z. Nor were the obHgations 
he incurred on his own account, or that of his 
family, the only ones by which he was bur- 
dened. He was always incurring expenses, 
often heavy expenses, for other people. Thus, 
when Mr. Terry, the actor, became joint lessee 
and manager of the Adelphi Theatre, London, 
Scott became his surety for 1250/., while James 
Ballantyne became his surety for 500/. more, 
and both these sums had to be paid by Sir Wal- 
ter after Terry's failure in 1828. Such obli- 
gations as these, however, would have been 
nothing when compared with Sir Walter's 
means, had all his bills on Constable been duly 
honoured, and had not the printing firm of Bal- 
lantyne and Co. been so deeply involved with 
Constable's house that it necessarily became in- 
solvent when he stopped. Taken altogether, I 
believe that Sir Walter earned during his own 
lifetime at least 140,000/. by his literary work 
alone, probably more; while even on his land 
and building combined he did not apparently 
spend more than half that sum. Then he had a 
certain income, about 1000/. a year, from his 
own and Lady Scott's private property, as well 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 269 

as 1300/. a year as clerk of session, and 300/. 
more as sheriff of Selkirk. Thus even his loss 
of the price of several novels by Constable's 
failure would not seriously have compromised 
Scott's position, but for his share in the print- 
ing-house which fell with Constable, and the 
obligations of which amounted to 117,000/. 

As Scott had always forestalled his income, — 
spending the purchase-money of his poems and 
novels before they were written, — such a fail- 
ure as this, at the age of fifty-five, when all the 
freshness of his youth was gone out of him, 
when he saw his son's prospects blighted 
as well as his own, and knew perfectly that 
James Ballantyne, unassisted by him, could 
never hope to pay any fraction of the debt 
worth mentioning, would have been paralys- 
ing, had he not been a man of iron nerve, and 
of a pride and courage hardly ever equalled. 
Domestic calamity, too, was not far off. For 
two years he had been watching the failure of 
his wife's health with increasing anxiety, and 
as calamities seldom come singly, her illness 
took a most serious form at the very time when 
the blow fell, and she died within four months 
of the failure. Nay, Scott was himself unwell 
at the critical moment, and was taking seda- 



270 LIFE OF 

tives which discomposed his brain. Twelve 
days before the final failure, — which was an- 
nounced to him on the 17th January, 1826, — 
he enters in his diary, ' Much alarmed. I had 
walked till twelve with Skene and Russell, and 
then sat down to my work. To my horror and 
surprise I could neither write nor spell, but put 
down one word for another, and wrote non- 
sense. I was much overpowered at the same time 
and could not conceive the reason. I fell asleep, 
however, in my chair, and slej)t for two hours. 
On my waking my head was clearer, and I 
began to recollect that last night I had taken 
the anodyne left for the purpose by Clarkson, 
and being disturbed in the course of the night, 
I had not slept it off.' In fact the hyoscyamus 
had, combined with his anxieties, given him a 
slight attack of what is now called aphasia, 
that brain disease the most striking symptom 
of which is that one word is mistaken for 
another. 

And this was Scott's preparation for his 
failure, and the bold resolve which followed 
it, to work for his creditors as he had worked 
for himself, and to pay off, if possible, the 
whole 117,000/. by his own literary exertions. 

There is nothing in its way in the whole of 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 2Tl 

English biography more impressive than the 
stoical extracts from Scott's diary which note 
the descent of this blow. Here is the anticipa- 
tion of the previous day ; ' Edinburgh, January 
16th. — Came through cold roads to as cold 
news. Hurst and Robinson have suffered a 
bill to come back upon Constable, which, I sup- 
pose, infers the ruin of both houses. We shall 
soon see. Dined with the Skenes.' And here 
is the record itself: 'January 17th. — James 
Ballantyne this morning, good honest fellow, 
with a visage as black as the crook. He hopes 
no salvation; has, indeed, taken measures to 
stop. It is hard, after having fought such a 
battle. I have apologized for not attending 
the Royal Society Club, who have a gaudea- 
mus on this day, and seemed to count much on 
my being the pr^eses. My old acquaintance 
ISIiss Elizabeth Clerk, sister of Willie, died sud- 
denly. I cannot choose, but wish it had been 
Sir W. S., and yet the feeling is unmanly. I 
have Anne, my wife, and Charles to look after. 
I felt rather sneaking as I came home from the 
Parliament-house — felt as if I were liable mon- 
strari digito in no very pleasant way. But this 
must be borne cuvi cceteris; and, thank God, 
however uncomfortable, I do not feel despond- 



272 LIFE OF 

ent.' ^ On the following day, the 18th Janu- 
ary, the day after the blow, he records a bad 
night, a wish that the next two days were over, 
but that ' the worst is over,' and on the same 
day he set about making notes for the magnum 
opus, as he called it — the complete edition of 
all the novels, with a new introduction and 
notes. On the 19th January, two daj^s after the 
failure, he calmly resumed the comj)osition of 
Woodstock — the novel on which he was then 
engaged — and completed, he says, ' about 
tv/enty printed pages of it ; ' to which he adds 
that he had ' a painful scene after dinner and 
another after supper, endeavouring to convince 
these poor creatures [his wife and daughter] 
that they must not look for miracles, but con- 
sider the misfortune as certain, and only to be 
lessened by patience and labour.' On the 21st 
January, after a number of business details, 
he quotes from Job, ' Naked we entered the 
world and naked we leave it; blessed be the 
name of the Lord.' On the 22d he saj^s, ' I 
feel neither dishonoured nor broken down by 
the bad, now truly bad, news I have received. 
I have walked my last in the domains I have 
planted — sat the last time in the halls I have 
^Lockhart's Life of Scott, viii. 197. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 273 

built. But death would have taken them from 
me, if misfortune had spared them. My poor 
people whom I loved so well! There is just 
another die to turn up against me in this run 
of ill-luck, i. e. if I should break my magic 
wand in the fall from this elephant, and lose 
my popularity with my fortune. Then Wood- 
stock and Boney [his life of Napoleon] may 
both go to the paper-maker, and I may take to 
smoking cigars and drinking grog, or turn de- 
votee and intoxicate the brain another way.' - 
He adds that when he sets to work doggedly, 
he is exactly the same man he ever was, ' neither 
low-spirited nor distrait f nay, that adversity 
is to him ' a tonic and bracer.' 

The heaviest blow was, I think, the blow to 
his pride. Very early he began to note pain-^ 
fully the different way in which different 
friends greet him, to remark that some smile 
as if to say, ' think nothing about it, my lad, 
it is quite out of our thoughts ; ' that others 
adopt an affected gravity, ' such as one sees 
and despises at a funeral,' and the best-bred 
' just shook hands and went on.' He writes to 
Mr. Morritt with a proud indifference, clearly 
to some extent simulated : — ' My womenkind 

2 Lockhart's Life of Scott, viii. 203-4. 



274 LIFE OF 

will be the greater sufferers, yet even they look 
cheerily forward ; and, for myself, the blowing 
off of my hat on a stormy day has given me 
more uneasiness.' ^ To Lady Davy he writes 
truly enough : — ' I beg my humblest compli- 
ments to Sir Humphrey, and tell him. 111 Luck, 
that direful chemist, never put into his crucible 
a more indissoluble piece of stuff than your 
affectionate cousin and sincere well-wisher, 
Walter Scott.' ' When his Letters of MalacU 
Malagrowther came out he writes: — 'I am 
glad of this bruilzie, as far as I am concerned ; 
people will not dare talk of me as an object 
of pity — no more ' poor-manning.' Who asks 
how many punds Scots the old champion had 
in his pocket when 

' " He set a bugle to his mouth, 
And blew so loud and shrill, 
The trees in greenwood shook thereat, 
Sae loud rang every hill," 

This sounds conceited enough, yet is not far 
from truth.' ^ His dread of pity is just the 
same when his wife dies: — * Will it be better,' 
he writes, ' when left to my own feelings, I 

^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, viii. 235. 
4 Lockhart's Life of Scott, viii. 238. 
^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, viii. 277- 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 2T5 

see the whole world pipe and dance around me ? 
I think it will. Their sympathy intrudes on 
my present affliction.' Again, on returning for 
the first time from Edinburgh to Abbotsford 
after Lady Scott's funeral : — ' I again took 
possession of the family bedroom and my 
widowed couch. This was a sore trial, but it 
was necessary not to blink such a resolution. 
Indeed I do not like to have it thought that 
there is anj^ way in which I can be beaten.' 
And again : — ' I have a secret pride — I fancy 
it will be so most truly termed — which impels 
me to mix v/ith my distresses strange snatches 
of mirth, " which have no mirth in them." ' ^ 

But though pride was part of Scott's 
strength, pride alone never enabled any man 
to struggle so vigorously and so unremittingly 
as he did to meet the obligations he had in- 
curred. When he was in Ireland in the pre- 
vious year, a poor woman who had offered to 
sell him gooseberries, but whose offer had not 
been accepted, remarked, on seeing his daugh- 
ter give some pence to a beggar, that they 
might as well give her an alms too, as she was 
* an old struggler.' Sir Walter was struck 
with the expression, and said that it deserved 

«Lockhart's Life of Scott, viii, 347, 371, 381. 



276 LIFE OF 

to become classical, as a name for those who 
take arms against a sea of troubles, instead of 
yielding to the waves. It was certainly a name 
the full meaning of which he himself deserved. 
His house in Edinburgh was sold, and he had 
to go into a certain Mrs. Brown's lodgings, 
when he was discharging his duties as Clerk 
of Session. His wife was dead. His estate 
was conveyed to trustees for the benefit of his 
creditors till such time as he should pay off 
Ballantyne and Go's, debt, which of course in 
his lifetime he never did. Yet between Jan- 
uary, 1826, and January, 1828, he earned for 
his creditors very nearly 40,000/. Woodstock 
sold for 8228/.^ ' a matchless sale,' as Sir 
Walter remarked, ' for less than three months' 
work.' The first two editions of The Life of 
Napoleon Bonaparte, on which Mr. Lockhart 
says that Scott had spent the unremitting 
labour of about two years — labour involving a 
far greater strain on eyes and brain than his 
imaginative work ever caused him — sold for 
18,000/. Had Sir Walter's health lasted, he 
would have redeemed his obligations on behalf 
of Ballantyne and Co. within eight or nine 
years at most from the time of his failure. 
But what is more remarkable still, is that after 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 277 

his health failed he struggled on with little 
more than half a brain, but a whole will, to 
work while it was yet day, though the evening 
was dropping fast. Count Robert of Paris 
and Castle Dangerous were really the composi- 
tions of a paralytic patient. 

It was in September, 1830, that the first of 
these tales was begun. As early as the 15th 
February of that year he had had his first true /^ 
paralytic seizure. He had been discharging 
his duties as clerk of session as usual, and re- 
ceived in the afternoon a visit from a lady 
friend of his. Miss Young, who was submit- 
ting to him some manuscript memoirs of her 
father, when the stroke came. It was but 
slight. He struggled against it with his usual 
iron power of will, and actually managed to 
stagger out of the room where the lady was 
sitting with him, into the drawing-room where 
his daughter was, but there he fell his full 
length on the floor. He was cupped, and 
fully recovered his speech during the course of 
the day, but Mr. Lockhart thinks that never, 
after this attack, did his style recover its full 
lucidity and terseness. A cloudiness in words 
and a cloudiness of arrangement began to be 
visible. In the course of the year he retired 



278 LIFE OF 

from his duties of clerk of session, and his pub- 
lishers hoped that, by engaging him on the new 
and complete edition of his works, they might 
detach him from the attempt at imaginative 
creation for which he was now so much less 
fit. But Sir Walter's will survived his judg- 
ment. When, in the previous year, Ballantyne 
had been disabled from attending to business 
by his wife's illness (which ended in her death) , 
Scott had written in his diary, ' It is his (Bal- 
lantyne's) nature to indulge apprehensions of 
the worst which incapacitate him for labour. 
I cannot help regarding this amiable weakness 
of the mind with something too nearly allied 
to contempt,' and assuredly he was guilty of 
no such weakness himself. Not only did he 
row much harder against the stream of fortune 
than he had ever rowed with it, but, what re- 
quired still more resolution, he fought on 
against the growing conviction that his imagi- 
nation would not kindle, as it used to do, to its 
old heat. 

When he dictated to Laidlaw, — for at this 
time he could hardly write himself for rheu- 
matism in the hand, — he would frequently 
pause and look round him, like a man ' mocked 
witli shadows.' Then he bestirred himself with 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 279 

a great effort, rallied his force, and the style 
again flowed clear and bright, but not for long. 
The clouds would gather again, and the mental 
blank recur. This soon became visible to his 
publishers, who wrote discouragingly of the 
new novel — to Scott's own great distress and 
irritation. The oddest feature in the matter 
was that his letters to them were full of the 
old terseness, and force, and caustic turns. On 
business he was as clear and keen as in his 
best days. It was only at his highest task, the 
task of creative work, that his cunning began 
to fail him. Here, for instance, are a few 
sentences written to Cadell, his publisher, 
touching this very point — the discouragement 
which James Ballantyne had been pouring on 
the new novel. Ballantyne, he says, finds fault 
with the subject, when what he really should 
have found fault with was the failing power 
of the author : — ' James is, with many other 
kindly critics, perhaps in the predicament of 
an honest drunkard, when crop-sick the next 
morning, who does not ascribe the malady to 
the wine he has drunk, but to having tasted 
some particular dish at dinner which disagreed 

with his stomach I have lost, it 

is plain, the power of interesting the country. 



280 LIFE OF 

and ought, in justice to all parties, to retire 
while I have some credit. But this is an im- 
portant step, and I will not be obstinate about 

it if it be necessary Frankly, I 

cannot think of flinging aside the half -finished 
volume, as if it were a corked bottle of wine. 
. , . I may, perhaps, take a trip to the 
Continent for a year or two, if I find Othello's 
occupation gone, or rather Othello's reputa- 
tion.' ^ And again, in a very able letter writ- 
ten on the 12th December, 1830, to Cadell, 
he takes a view of the situation with as much 
calmness and imperturbability as if he were an 
outside spectator. ' There were many circum- 
stances in the matter which you and J. B. 
(James Ballantyne) could not be aware of, 
and which, if you were aware of, might have 
influenced your judgment, which had, and yet 
have, a most powerful effect upon mine. The 
deaths of both my father and mother have been 
preceded by a paralytic shock. My father sur- 
vived it for nearly two years — a melancholy 
respite, and not to be desired. I was alarmed 
with Miss Young's morning visit, when, as you 
know, I lost my speech. The medical people 
said it was from the stomach, which might be, 
but while there is a doubt upon a point so 

"^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, x. 11, 12. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 281 

alarming, you will not wonder that the subject, 
or to use Hare's lingo, the shot, should be a 
little anxious.' He relates how he had fol- 
lowed all the strict medical regime prescribed 
to him with scrupulous regularity, and then be- 
gun his work again with as much attention as 
he could. ' And having taken pains with my 
story, I find it is not relished, nor indeed toler- 
ated, by those who have no interest in condemn- 
ing it, but a strong interest in putting even a 
face' (? force) ' upon their consciences. Was 
not this, in the circumstances, a damper to an 
invalid already afraid that the sharp edge 
might be taken off his intellect, though he was 
not himself sensible of that? ' In fact, no 
more masterly discussion of the question 
whether his mind were failing or not, and what 
he ought to do in the interval of doubt, can be 
conceived, than these letters give us. At this 
time the debt of Ballantyne and Co. had been 
reduced by repeated dividends — all the fruits 
of Scott's literary work — more than one-half. 
On the 17th of December, 1830, the liabilities 
stood at 54,000/., having been reduced 63,000Z. 
within five years. And Sir Walter, encouraged 
by this great result of his labour, resumed the 
suspended novel. 



282 LIFE OF 

But with the beginning of 1831 came new 
alarms. On January 5th Sir Walter enters in 
his diary, — ' Very indilFerent, with more awk- 
ward feelings than I can well bear up against. 
My voice sunk and my head strangely con- 
fused.' Still he struggled on. On the 31st Jan- 
uary he went alone to Edinburgh to sign his 
will, and stayed at his bookseller's (Cadell's) 
house in Athol Crescent. A great snow-storm 
set in which kept him in Edinburgh and in Mr. 
Cadell's house till the 9th February. One day 
while the snow was still falling heavily, Bal- 
lantyne reminded him that a motto was want- 
ing for one of the chapters of Count Robert 
of Paris. He went to the window, looked out 
for a moment, and then wrote, — 

* The storm increases ; 'tis no sunny shower, 
Foster'd in the moist breast of March or April, 
Or such as parched summer cools his lips with. 
Heaven's windows are flung wide ; the inmost deeps 
Call, in hoarse greeting, one upon another; 
On comes the flood, in all its foaming horrors^ 
And where's the dike shall stop it? 

The Deluge: a Poem.' 

Clearly this failing imagination of Sir 
Walter's was still a great deal more vivid than 
that of most men, with brains as sound as it 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 283 

ever pleased Providence to make them. But 
his troubles were not yet even numbered. The 
' storm increased,' and it was, as he said, ' no 
sunny shower.' His lame leg became so pain- 
ful that he had to get a mechanical apparatus 
to relieve him of some of the burden of sup- 
porting it. Then, on the 21st March, he was 
hissed at Jedburgh, as I have before said, for 
his vehement opposition to Reform. In April 
he had another stroke of paralysis which he 
now himself recognized as one. Still he 
struggled on at his novel. Under the date of 
May 6, 7, 8, he makes this entry in his diary : — 
' Here is a precious job. I have a formal re- 
monstrance from those critical people, Ballan- 
tyne and Cadell, against the last volume of 
Count Robert^ which is within a sheet of being 
finished. I suspect their opinion will be found 
to coincide with that of the public; at least it 
is not very different from my own. The blow 
is a stunning one, I suppose, for I scarcely feel 
it. It is singular, but it comes with as little 
surprise as if I had a remedy ready; yet God 
knows I am at sea in the dark, and the vessel 
leaky, I think, into the bargain. I cannot con- 
ceive that I have tied a knot with my tongue 
which my teeth cannot untie. We shall see. I 



284 LIFE OF 

have suffered terribly, that is the truth, rather 
in body than mind, and I often wish I could 
lie down and sleep without waking. But I will 
fight it out if I can.' ^ The medical men with 
one accord tried to make him give up his novel- 
writing. But he smiled and put them by. He 
took up Count Robert of Paris again, and 
tried to recast it. On the 18th May he insisted 
on attending the election for Roxburghshire, 
to be held at Jedburgh, and in spite of the un- 
mannerly reception he had met with in March, 
no dissuasion would keep him at home. He 
was saluted in the town with groans and blas- 
phemies, and Sir Walter had to escape from 
Jedburgh by a back way to avoid personal 
violence. The cries of ' Burk Sir Walter,' 
with which he was saluted on this occasion, 
haunted him throughout his illness and on his 
dying bed. At the Selkirk election it was Sir 
Walter's duty as Sheriff to preside, and his 
family therefore made no attempt to dissuade 
him from his attendance. There he was so well 
known and loved, that in spite of his Tory 
views, he was not insulted, and the only man 
who made any attempt to hustle the Tory 
electors, was seized by Sir Walter mth his own 

8 Lockhart's Life of Scott, x, 65-6. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 285 

hand, as he got out of his carriage, and com- 
mitted to prison without resistance till the 
election day was over. 

A seton which had been ordered for his head 
gave him some relief, and of course the first 
result was that he turned immediately to his 
novel-writing again, and began Castle Danger- 
ous in July, 1831, — the last July but one which 
he was to see at all. He even made a little 
journey in company with Mr. Lockhart, in 
order to see the scene of the story he wished to 
tell, and on his return set to work v/ith all his 
old vigour to finish his tale, and put the con- 
cluding touches to Count Robert of Paris. 
But his temper was no longer what it had been. 
He quarrelled with Ballantyne, partly for his 
depreciatory criticism of Count Robert of 
Paris, partly for his growing tendency to a 
mystic and strait-laced sort of dissent and his 
increasing Liberalism. Even Mr. Laidlaw and 
Scott's children had much to bear. But he 
struggled on even to the end, and did not con- 
sent to try the experiment of a voyage and visit 
to Italy till his immediate work was done. 
Well might Lord Chief Baron Shepherd apply 
to Scott Cicero's description of some contem- 
porary of his own, who ' had borne adversity 



286 LIFE OF 

wisely, who had not been broken by fortune, 
and who, amidst the buffets of fate, had main- 
tained his dignity.' There was in Sir Walter, 
I think, at least as much of the Stoic as the 
Christian. But Stoic or Christian, he was a 
hero of the old, indomitable type. Even the 
last fragments of his imaginative power were 
all turned to account by that unconquerable 
will, amidst the discouragement of friends, 
and the still more disheartening doubts of his 
own mind. Like the headland stemming a 
rough sea, he was gradually worn away, but 
never crushed. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 287 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE LAST YEAR 

XN the month of September, 1831, the 
disease of the brain which had long 
been in existence must have made a 
considerable step in advance. For the first 
time the illusion seemed to possess Sir Walter 
that he had paid off aU the debt for which he 
was liable, and that he was once more free to 
^ve as his generosity prompted. Scott sent 
Mr. Lockhart 501. to save his grandchildren 
some slight inconvenience, and told another of 
his correspondents that he had * put his decayed 
fortune into as good a condition as he could 
desire.' It was well, therefore, that he had at 
last consented to try the effect of travel on his 
health, — not that he could hope to arrest by it 
such a disease as his, but that it diverted him 
from the most painful of all efforts, that of 
trying anew the spell which had at last failed 
him, and perceiving in the disappointed eyes 
of his old admirers that the magic of his imagi- 



288 LIFE OF 

nation was a thing of the past. The last day 
of real enjojanent at Abbotsford — for when 
Sir Walter returned to it to die, it was but to 
catch once more the outlines of its walls, the 
rustle of its woods, and the gleam of its waters, 
through senses already darkened to all less 
familiar and less fascinating visions — was the 
22d September, 1831. On the 21st, Words- 
worth had come to bid his old friend adieu, and 
on the 22d — the last day at home — they spent 
the morning together in a visit to ISTewark. It 
was a day to deepen alike in Scott and in 
Wordsworth whatever of sympathy either of 
them had with the very different genius of the 
other, and that it had this result in Words- 
worth's case, we know from the very beautiful 
poem, — ' Yarrow Revisited,' — and the son- 
net which the occasion also produced. And 
even Scott, who was so little of a Words- 
worthian, who enjoyed Johnson's stately but 
formal verse, and Crabbe's vivid Dutch paint- 
ing, more than he enjoyed the poetry of the 
transcendental school, must have recurred that 
day with more than usual emotion to his 
favourite Wordsworthian poem. Soon after 
his wife's death, he had remarked in his diary 
how finely ' the effect of grief upon persons 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 289 

who like myself are highly susceptible of 
humour ' had been * touched by Wordsworth in 
the character of the merry village teacher, Mat- 
thew, whom Jeffrey profanely calls a half- 
crazy, sentimental person.' ^ And long before 
this time, during the brightest period of his 
life, Scott had made the old Antiquary of his 
novel quote the same poem of Wordsworth's, 
in a passage where the period of life at which 
he had now arrived is anticipated with singu- 
lar pathos and force. ' It is at such moments 
as these,' says Mr. Oldbuck, ' that we feel the 
changes of time. The same objects are before 
us — those inanimate things which we have 
gazed on in wayward infancy and impetuous 
youth, in anxious and scheming manhood — 
they are permanent and the same ; but when we 
look upon them in cold, unfeeling old age, can 
we, changed in our temper, our pursuits, our 
feelings, — changed in our form, our limbs, and 
our strength, — can we ourselves be called the 
same? or do we not rather look back with a sort 
of wonder upon our former selves as beings 
separate and distinct from what we now are? 
The philosopher who appealed from Philip in- 
flamed with wine to Philip in his hours of 
^ Lockhart's Life of Scott, ix. QS. 



290 LIFE OF 

sobriety, did not claim a judge so different as 
if he had appealed from Philip in his youth to 
Philip in his old age. I cannot but be touched 
with the feelings so beautifully expressed in a 
poem which I have heard repeated: — 

' " My eyes are dim with childish tears, 

My heart is idly stirr'd, 
For the same sound is in my ears 

Which in those days I heard. 
Thus fares it still in our decay, 

And yet the wiser mind 
Mourns less for what age takes away 

Than what it leaves behind." ' ~ 

Sir Walter's memory, which, in spite of the 
slight failure of brain and the mild illusions 
to which, on the subject of his own prospects, 
he was now liable, had as yet been little im- 
paired — indeed, he could still quote whole 
pages from all his favourite authors — must 
have recurred to those favourite Words- 
worthian lines of his with singular force, as, 
with Wordsworth for his companion, he gazed 
on the refuge of the last Minstrel of his imagi- 
nation for the last time, and felt in himself 
how much of joy in the sight, age had taken 
away, and how much, too, of the habit of ex- 

2 The Antiquary, chap. x. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 291 

pecting it, it had unfortunately left behind. 
Whether Sir Walter recalled this poem of 
Wordsworth's on this occasion or not — and if 
he recalled it, his delight in giving pleasure 
would assuredly have led him to let Words- 
worth know that he recalled it — the mood it 
paints was unquestionably that in which his 
last day at Abbotsford was passed. In the 
evening, referring to the journey which was to 
begin the next day, he remarked that Fielding 
and Smollett had been driven abroad by de- 
clining health, and that they had never re- 
turned; while Wordsworth — willing perhaps 
to bring out a brighter feature in the present 
picture — regretted that the last days of those 
two great novelists had not been surrounded 
by due marks of respect. With Sir Walter, 
as he well knew, it was different. The Liberal 
Government that he had so bitterly opposed 
were pressing on him signs of the honour in 
which he was held, and a ship of his Majestyjs 
navy had been placed at his disposal to take 
him to the Mediterranean. And Wordsworth 
himself added his own more durable token of 
reverence. As long as English poetry lives, 
Englishmen will know something of that last 
day of the last Minstrel at Newark: — 



292 LIFE OF 

' Grave thoughts ruled wide on that sweet day, 

Their dignity installing 
In gentle bosoms, while sere leaves 

Were on the bough or falling; 
But breezes play'd, and sunshine gleam'd 

The forest to embolden, 
Redden'd the fiery hues, and shot 

Transparence through the golden. 

* For busy tlioughts the stream flow'd on 

In foamy agitation; 
And slept in many a crystal pool 

For quiet contemplation: 
No public and no private care 

The free-born mind enthralling, 
We made a day of happy hours. 

Our happy days recalling. 

* And if, as Yarrow through the woods 

And down the meadow ranging. 
Did meet us with unalter'd face. 

Though we were changed and changing; 
If then some natural shadow spread 

Our inward prospect over. 
The soul's deep valley was not slow 

Its brightness to recover. 

* Eternal blessings on the Muse 

And her divine employment. 
The blameless Muse who trains her sons 
For hope and calm enjoyment; 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 293 

Albeit sickness lingering yet 

Has o'er their pillow brooded. 
And care waylays their steps — a sj3rite 

Not easily eluded. 

* Nor deem that localized Romance 

Plays false with our affections; 
Unsanctifies our tears — made sport 

For fanciful dejections: 
Ah, no ! the visions of the past 

Sustain the heart in feeling 
Life as she is — our changeful Life 

With friends and kindred dealing. 

* Bear witness ye, whose thoughts that day 

In Yarrow's groves were centred, 
Who through the silent portal arch 

Of mouldering Newark enter'd ; 
And clomb the winding stair that once 

Too timidly was mounted 
By the last Minstrel — not the last! — 

Ere he his tale recounted.' 

Thus did the meditative poetry, the day of 
which was not yet, do honour to itself in doing 
homage to the ISIinstrel of romantic energy 
and martial enterprise, who, with the school of 
poetry he loved, was passing away. 

On the 23d September Scott left Abbots- 
ford, sj)ending five days on his journey to 



294 LIFE OF 

London; nor would he allow any of the old 
objects of interest to be passed without getting 
out of the carriage to see them. He did not 
leave London for Portsmouth till the 23d 
October, but spent the intervening time in 
London, where he took medical advice, and 
with his old shrewdness wheeled his chair into 
a dark corner during the physicians' absence 
from the room to consult, that he might read 
their faces clearly on their return without their 
being able to read his. They recognized traces 
of brain disease, but Sir Walter was relieved 
by their comparatively favourable opinion, for 
he admitted that he had feared insanity, and 
therefore had ' feared them/ On the 29th 
October he sailed for Malta, and on the 20th 
November Sir Walter insisted on being landed 
on a small volcanic island which had appeared 
four months previously, and which disappeared 
again in a few days, and on clambering about 
its crumbling lava, in spite of sinking at nearly 
every step almost up to his knees, in order that 
he might send a description of it to his old 
friend Mr. Skene. On the 22d November he 
reached Malta, where he looked eagerly at the 
antiquities of the place, for he still hoped to 
write a novel — and, indeed, actually wrote one 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 295 

at Naples, which was never pubHshed, called 
The Siege of Malta — on the subject of the 
Knights of Malta, who had interested him so 
much in his youth. From ]Malta Scott went to 
Naples, which he reached on the 17th Decem- 
ber, and where he found much pleasure in the 
society of Sir William Gell, an invalid like 
himself, but not one who, like himself, strug- 
gled against the admission of his infirmities, 
and refused to be carried when his own legs 
would not safely carry him. Sir William 
Gell's dog delighted the old man ; he would pat 
it and call it ' Poor boy ! ' and confide to Sir 
William how he had at home ' two very fine 
favourite dogs, so large that I am always 
afraid they look too large and too feudal for 
my diminished income.' In all his letters home 
he gave some injunction to Mr. Laidlaw about 
the poor people and the dogs. 

On the 22d March, 1832, Goethe died, an 
event which made a great impression on Scott, 
who had intended to visit Weimar on his way 
back, on purpose to see Goethe, and this much 
increased his eager desire to return home. 
Accordingly on the 16th of April, the last 
day on which he made any entry in his 
diary, he quitted Naples for Rome, where he 



296 LIFE OF 

stayed long enough only to let his daughter 
see something of the place, and hurried off 
homewards on the 21st of May. In Venice he 
was still strong enough to insist on scrambling 
down into the dungeons adjoining the Bridge 
of Sighs ; and at Frankfort he entered a book- 
seller's shop, when the man brought out a 
lithograph of Abbotsford, and Scott remark- 
ing, ' I know that already, sir,' left the shop 
unrecognized, more than ever craving for 
home. At Nimeguen, on the 9th of June, 
while in a steamboat on the Rhine, he had his 
most serious attack of apoplexy, but would not 
discontinue his journey, was lifted into an 
English steamboat at Rotterdam on the 11th of 
June, and arrived in London on the 13th. 
There he recognized his children, and appeared 
to expect immediate death, as he gave them 
repeatedly his most solemn blessing, but for the 
most part he lay at the St. James's Hotel, in 
Jermyn Street, without any power to converse. 
There it was that Allan Cunningham, on walk- 
ing home one night, found a group of working- 
men at the corner of the street, who stopped 
him and asked, ' as if there was but one death- 
bed in London, " Do you know, sir, if this is 
the street where he is lying? " ' According to 



SIR WALTER SCOTTi 297 

the usual irony of destiny, it was while the 
workingmen were doing him this hearty and 
unconscious homage, that Sir Walter, when- 
ever disturbed by the noises of the street, imag- 
ined himself at the polling-booth of Jedburgh, 
where the people had cried out, ' Burk Sir Wal- 
ter.' And it was while lying here, — only now 
and then uttering a few words, — ^that Mr. 
Lockhart says of him, ' He expressed his will 
as determinedly as ever, and expressed it with 
the same apt and good-natured irony that he 
was wont to use.' 

Sir Walter's great and urgent desire was to 
return to Abbotsf ord, and at last his physicians 
yielded. On the 7th July he was lifted into his 
carriage, followed by his trembling and weep- 
ing daughters, and so taken to a steamboat, 
where the captain gave up his private cabin — 
a cabin on deck — for his use. He remained un- 
conscious of any change till after his arrival 
in Edinburgh, when, on the 11th July, he was 
placed again in his carriage, and remained in 
it quite unconscious during the first two stages 
of the journey to Tweedside. But as the car- 
riage entered the valley of the Gala, he began 
to look about him. Presently he murmured a 
name or two, ' Gala water, surely, — Buck- 



298 LIFE OF 

holm, — Torwoodlee.' When the outline of the 
Eildon hills came in view, Scott's excitement 
was great, and when his eye caught the towers 
of Abbotsford, he sprang up with a cry of de- 
light, and while the towers remained in sight 
it took his physician, his son-in-law, and his 
servant, to keep him in the carriage. Mr. Laid- 
law was waiting for him, and he met him with 
a cry, ' Ha ! Willie Laidlaw ! O, man, how 
often I have thought of you! ' His dogs came 
round his chair and began to fawn on him and 
lick his hands, while Sir Walter smiled or 
sobbed over them. The next morning he was 
wheeled about his garden, and on the following 
morning was out in this way for a couple of 
hours; within a day or two he fancied that he 
could write again, but on taking the pen into 
his hand, his fingers could not clasp it, and he 
sank back with tears rolling down his cheek. 
Later, when Laidlaw said in his hearing that 
Sir Walter had had a little repose, he replied, 
' No, Willie; no repose for Sir Walter but in 
the grave.' As the tears rushed from his eyes, 
his old pride revived. ' Friends,' he said, ' don't 
let me expose myself — get me to bed, — that is 
the only place.' 

After this Sir Walter never left his room. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 299 

Occasionally he dropped off into delirium, and 
the old painful memory, — that cry of ' Burk 
Sir Walter,' — might be again heard on his lips. 
He lingered, however, till the 21st September, 
■ — more than two months from the day of his 
reaching home, and a year from the day of 
Wordsworth's arrival at Abbotsf ord before his 
departure for the Mediterranean, with only 
one clear interval of consciousness, on Monday, 
the 17th September. On that day Mr. Lock- 
hart was called to Sir Walter's bedside with the 
news that he had awakened in a state of com- 
posure and consciousness, and wished to see 
him. ' " Lockhart," he said, " I may have but 
a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good 
man, — be virtuous, — be religious, — be a good 
man. Nothing else will give you any comfort 
when you come to lie here." He paused, and I 
said, "Shall I send for Sophia and Anne?" 
" No," said he, " don't disturb them. Poor 
souls I I know they were up all night. God 
bless you all ! " ' With this he sank into a very 
tranquil sleep, and, indeed, he scarcely after- 
wards gave any sign of consciousness except for 
an instant on the arrival of his sons. And so 
four days afterwards, on the day of the au- 
tumnal equinox in 1832, at half-past one in the 



300 LIFE OF 

afternoon, on a glorious autumn day,v*^ith every 
window open, and the ripple of the Tweed over 
its pebbles distinctly audible in his room, he 
passed away, and ' his eldest son kissed and 
closed his eyes.' He died a month after com- 
pleting his sixty-first year. Nearly seven years 
earlier, on the 7th December, 1825, he had in 
his diary taken a survey of his ov/n health in 
relation to the age reached by his father and 
other members of his family, and had stated 
as the result of his considerations, ' Square the 
odds and good-night, Sir Walter, about sixty. 
I care not if I leave my name unstained and 
my family properly settled. Sat est viocissef 
Thus he lived just a year — but a year of grad- 
ual death— beyond his own calculation. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 301 




CHAPTER XVII 
THE END OF THE STRUGGLE 

'IR WALTER certainly left his 'name 
unstained,' unless the serious mistakes 
natural to a sanguine temperament 
such as his, are to be counted as stains upon his 
name; and if they are, where among the sons 
of men would you find many unstained names 
as noble as his with such a stain upon it? He 
was not only sensitively honourable in motive, 
but, when he found what evil his sanguine tem- 
per had worked, he used his gigantic powers 
to repair it, as Samson used his great strength 
to repair the mischief he had inadvertently 
done to Israel. But with all his exertions he 
had not, when death came upon him, cleared 
off much more than half his obligations. There 
was still 54,000Z. to pay. But of this, 22,000/. 
was secured in an insurance on his life, and 
there were besides a thousand pounds or two 
in the hands of the trustees, which had not been 
applied to the extinction of the debt. Mr. 



302 LIFE OF 

Cadell, his publisher, accordingly advanced the 
remaining 30,000Z. on the security of Sir Wal- 
ter's copyrights, and on the 21st February, 
1833, the general creditors were paid in full, 
and Mr. Cadell remained the only creditor of 
the estate. In February, 1847, Sir Walter's 
son, the second baronet, died childless; and in 
May, 1847, Mr. Cadell gave a discharge in full 
of all claims, including the bond for 10,000/. 
executed by Sir Walter during the struggles 
of Constable and Co. to prevent a failure, on 
the transfer to him of all the copyrights of Sir 
Walter, including ' the results of some literary 
exertions of the sole surviving executor,' which 
I conjecture to mean the copyright of the ad- 
mirable biography of Sir Walter Scott in ten 
volumes, to which I have made such a host of 
references — probably the most perfect speci- 
men of a biography rich in great materials, 
which our language contains. And thus, nearly 
fifteen years after Sir Walter's death, the 
debt which, within six years, he had more than 
half discharged, was at last, through the value 
of the copyrights he had left behind him, 
finally extinguished, and the small estate at 
Abbotsford left cleared. 

Sir Walter's eifort to found a new house 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 303 

was even less successful than the effort to en- 
dow it. His eldest son died childless. In 1839 
he went to Madras, as Lieutenant-Colonel of 
the 15th Hussars, and subsequently com- 
manded that regiment. He was as much be- 
loved by the officers of his regiment as his 
father had been by his own friends, and was in 
every sense an accomplished soldier, and one 
whose greatest anxiety it was to promote the 
welfare of the privates as well as of the officers 
of his regiment. He took great pains in found- 
ing a library for the soldiers of his corps, and 
his only legacy out of his own family was one 
of lOOZ. to this library. The cause of his death 
was his having exposed himself rashly to the 
sun in a tiger-hunt, in August, 1846; he never 
recovered from the fever which was the imme- 
diate consequence. Ordered home for his 
health, he died near the Cape of Good Hope, 
on the 8th of February, 1847. His brother 
Charles died before him. He was rising rapidly 
in the diplomatic service, and was taken to 
Persia by Sir John MacNeill, on a diplomatic 
mission, as attache and private secretary. But 
the climate struck him down, and he died at 
Teheran, almost immediately on his arrival, on 
the 28th October, 1841. Both the sisters had 



304 LIFE OF 

died previously. Anne Scott, the younger of 
the two, whose health had suffered greatly 
during the prolonged anxiety of her father's 
illness, died on the Midsummer-day of the year 
following her father's death ; and Sophia, Mrs. 
Lockhart, died on the 17th May, 1837. Sir 
Walter's eldest grandchild, John Hugh Lock- 
hart, for whom the Tales of a Grandfather 
were written, died before his grandfather; in- 
deed Sir Walter heard of the child's death at 
Naples. The second son, Walter Scott Lock- 
hart Scott, a lieutenant in the army, died at 
Versailles, on the 10th January, 1853. 
Charlotte Harriet Jane Lockhart, who was 
married in 1847 to James Robert Hope- Scott, 
and succeeded to the Abbotsford estate, died 
at Edinburgh, on the 26th October, 1858, leav- 
ing three children, of whom only one survives. 
Walter JMichael and Margaret Anne Hope- 
Scott both died in infancy. The only direct 
descendant, therefore, of Sir Walter Scott, is 
now Mary IMonica Hope- Scott, who was born 
on the 2nd October, 1852, the grandchild of 
Mrs. Lockhart, and the great-grandchild of 
the founder of Abbotsford. 

There is something of irony in such a result 
of the herculean labours of Scott to found and 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 305 

endow a new branch of the clan of Scott. 
When fifteen years after his death the estate 
was at length freed from debt, all his own chil- 
dren and the eldest of his grandchildren were 
dead; and now forty-six years have elapsed, 
and there only remains one girl of his descend- 
ants to borrow his name and live in the halls of 
which he was so proud. And yet this, and this 
only, was wanting to give something of the 
grandeur of tragedy to the end of Scott's 
great enterprise. He valued his works little 
compared with the house and lands which they 
were to be the means of gaining for his de- 
scendants; yet every end for which he strug- 
gled so gallantly is all but lost, while his works 
have gained more of added lustre from the 
losing battle which he fought so long, than they 
could ever have gained from his success. 

What there was in him of true grandeur 
could never have been seen, had the fifth act of 
his life been less tragic than it vi^as. Generous, 
large-hearted, and magnanimous as Scott was, 
there was something in the days of his pros- 
perity that fell short of what men need for 
their highest ideal of a strong man. Unbroken 
success, unrivalled popularity, imaginative 
effort flowing almost as steadily as the current 



306 LIFE OF 

of a stream, — these are characteristics, which, 
even when enhanced as they were in his case, by 
the power to defy physical pain, and to live in 
his imaginative world when his body was writh- 
ing in torture, fail to touch the heroic point. 
And there was nothing in Scott, while he re- 
mained prosperous, to relieve adequately the 
glare of triumphant prosperity. His rehgious 
and moral feeling, though strong and sound, 
was purely regulative, and not always even 
regulative, where his inward principle was not 
reflected in the opinions of the society in which 
he lived. The finer spiritual element in Scott 
was relatively deficient, and so the strength of 
the natural man was almost too equal, com- 
plete, and glaring. Something that should 
' tame the glaring white ' of that broad sun- 
shine, was needed ; and in the years of reverse, 
when one gift after another was taken away, 
till at length what he called even his ' magic 
wand ' was broken, and the old man struggled 
on to the last, without bitterness, without defi- 
ance, without murmuring, but not without such 
sudden flashes of subduing sweetness as melted 
away the anger of the teacher of his childhood, 
— ^that something seemed to be supplied. Till 
calamity came, Scott appeared to be a nearly 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 307 

complete natural man, and no more. Then 
first was perceived in him something above 
nature, something which could endure though 
every end in life for which he had fought so 
boldly should be defeated, — something which 
could endure and more than endure, which 
could shoot a soft transparence of its own 
through his years of darkness and decay. That 
there was nothing very elevated in Scott's per- 
sonal or moral, or political or literary ends, — 
that he never for a moment thought of himself 
as one who wai5 bound to leave the earth better 
than he found it, — that he never seems to have 
so much as contemplated a social or political 
reform for which he ought to contend, — that 
he lived to some extent like a child blowing 
soap-bubbles, the brightest and most gorgeous 
of which — the Abbots ford bubble — vanished 
before his eyes, is not a take-off from the 
charm of his career, but adds to it the very 
specialty of its fascination. For it was his en- 
tire unconsciousness of moral or spiritual ef- 
forts, the simple straightforward way in which 
he laboured for ends of the most ordinary kind, 
which made it clear how much greater the man 
was than his ends, how great was the mind and 
character which prosperity failed to display, 



308 SIR WALTER SCOTT ^, 

but which became visible at once so soon as the 
storm came down and the night fell. Few men 
who battle avowedly for the right, battle for it 
with the calm fortitude, the cheerful equanim- 
ity, with which Scott battled to fulfil his en- 
gagements and to save his family from ruin. 
He stood high amongst those — 

* Who ever with a frolic welcome took 
The thunder and the sunshine^ and opposed 
Free hearts, free foreheads,' 

among those who have been able to display — 

' One equal temper of heroic hearts 
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will. 
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.' 

And it was because the man was so much 
greater than the ends for which he strove, that 
there is a sort of grandeur in the tragic fate 
which denied them to him, and yet exhibited to 
all the world the infinite superiority of the 
striver himself to the toy he was thus passion- 
ately craving. 






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